Reading Epistemology: Selected Texts with Interactive Commentary (Reading Philosophy)

Sven Bernecker . reading epistemology selected texts with interactive com.mentary Sven Bernecker reading epistemolog...

Author: Sven Bernecker

95 downloads 1574 Views 5MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

Sven Bernecker

. reading epistemology selected texts with interactive com.mentary

Sven Bernecker

reading epistemology "Sve n Be rnecker's boo k is an excellen t: on e for s tud enrs. Th e selected passclges are very well chosen, a nd the commen taries are explanatory, acur e, imercst in q , and 'w ell infor m ed. By not being over d era iled or dogmatic, rhey will serve to stim u late critica ! th o ug ht, wh ic h is v ery much the bo o k' s aim." Pau! Sno wdon, Uni versity ColLege Londof2 "Ber necke r C)() es beyo nd th e traditional anthol o gy by c om b i n in ~J w el l-chose n p rimary sources wi th ca refully constructed cOlnmentary on each source \\'hi (1I not only h elp the reader make sense of complex arg um e nts and th eses, bur vvh ic h also place the pr imary sourc es in [he cont ex t of th e debates and controve rsi es from \vhich rh ey ari se . Anyo ne who teaches epis temology will want to take a clo se lo ok at This tex t ." Sa ul Jl-cuger, Occidental Co!!egc

r)e~irlll\,'d lo r rt'acJer~ \\ ho have hac! III! Ie or no e"pnsure 10 clllltem porary rheory of kno\\.ledgc. HeaVing lpl~remol(lq.l' brings together h\ elVl lmpOnall\ and influential \\ rilinqs 0n the subject. hH) c()nrra~ling \'ie \'S are pre~ellled on each of ,'i\ core wpic.;s; rhe det1nitlon of knowledge. the relatioIl be' \\ eell jllslillcI:)rion and trLlth epistemic c1urie ilild \·inues. resrinlOnial knO\\ ledge, tnundatiunalism ,erSLIS coiJerenrism, and scepti cism ane! cnI1rextllalism. \mong the auri1l)rs are ozkk , Ernest SUSCl , Ah In Goldman, BonJour. Drerske. Clnd Burge, Each chaptcr conra\l1S all introducLJon to the topic, InLroducrions (0 1I1e Clurhors . extensive commenltlnes 1m lile [e:--ls. quesr ions for debate, and an annowteci biblio~Il'aplw Tbe i llrf(JdU. However, Nozick uses '-> for both types of 'if ... then' relations. This example is borrowed from D. Lewis, Counteifactuals (Blackwell, 1973), pp. 8-9.

DEFINING KNOWLEDGE

23

considerably weaker than the relation of logical implication which is expressed by '----+'. The notion of reliability explicated by the variation and adherence conditions does not guarantee truth; it does not imply infallibility. Before setting forth his reliabilist analysis of knowledge, Nozick critically discusses the causal definition of knowledge. According to the causal analysis of knowledge, for S to know that p, the belief that p must be caused by the fact that p. To see how the causal condition helps with the Gettier problem, note that in each of Gettier's examples an appropriate causal relation is absent. For instance, what causes Smith to believe that Jones owns a Ford or Brown is in Barcelona is not the fact that makes his belieftrue (namely, that Brown is in Barcelona) but something else, namely the fact that causes him to falsely believe that Jones owns a Ford. So the causal condition is not satisfied. The facts that make Smith's belief true are not the facts that cause him to believe. That is why, despite having a justified true belief, Smith lacks knowledge. A problem with the causal definition of knowledge is that it doesn't seem to work for mathematical knowledge or for knowledge of future events. It is not clear how the numbers 3 and 5 cause me to believe that they make 8, or how the future fact that the sun will rise tomorrow causes me to know this fact. Nozick's reliabilist account doesn't run into this kind of problem. I know that 3 plus 5 is 8 if this condition is met: if 3 plus 5 were not 8, then I would not believe that it was. In the passage marked ~ Nozick provides a further argument against the causal analysis of knowledge. Suppose you are a brain suspended in a vat (or tank) full of liquid in a laboratory, and wired up to a computer which is feeding you your experiences and beliefs under the control of some ingenious scientist. The scientist can induce in you any belief and any experience that he chooses. Now suppose the scientist produces in you the true belief that you are a brain in a vat. In this case the causal condition is met: your belief that you are a brain in a vat is in part caused by the fact that you are a brain in a vat. Does this mean that the brain in a vat knows that it is a brain in a vat? Intuitively the answer is 'no'. Why does Nozick claim in ~ that cases of causal overdetermination problem for the causaleanalysis of knowledge but not for the variation Consider the following example of causal overdetermination: you are looking at a kangaroo and come to believe that there is a kangaroo. A hologram of a kangaroo is arranged to pop up if the kangaroo is not present, but you are looking at the real kangaroo. Since it is in fact the real kangaroo that is causing you to believe that there is a kangaroo, the causal theory of knowledge is committed to granting you knowledge. However, it is questionable whether you do really know, for the situation is such that you would believe that there is a kangaroo even if there were none. This suggests that the causal analysis of knowledge is too weak. In cases of causal overdetermination, we have causation but the variation conditional is false because another causal relation would sustain the belief if the proper cause did not.

24

DEFINING KNOWLEDGE

In the passage marked ~ Nozick discusses the relevant alternative theory of knowledge, which bears strong affinities to his own tracking account. According to the relevant alternative theory, a subject knows that p if he can distinguish or discriminate the truth of p from possible alternatives, i.e., states of affairs in which p is false. It is not enough, for example, to truly believe of the woman in front of you that she is Lilly to know it. If you cannot distinguish her from Milly (her twin sister), then despite the truth of your belief, and despite the justification for it (she looks exactly like Lilly), knowledge is absent. If knowledge required the discrimination of all possible alternatives, though, there would be little or no knowledge (must you be able to distinguish Lilly from cleverly disguised imposters?). In order to avoid this sceptical outcome, epistemologists restrict the scope of possible alternatives which a knower has to be able to discriminate among to relevant ones only. There are several possible views about what might be deemed 'relevant'. How does Nozick's variation condition help to determine which alternatives are relevant and thus need to be eliminated before S can know that p? The variation condition may be viewed, Nozick claims, as fleshing out a criterion for when an alternative is relevant: the criterion is whether the alternative would have obtained were p false. (The philosopher who is largely responsible for the relevant alternative approach to knowledge is Dretske. In Chapter 6 we will discuss an essay in which Dretske employs the relevant alternative theory to refute scepticism.) Some claim that the variation condition is problematic because it doesn't permit us to admit that typically when S knows that p it will also be true that S knows that he doesn't falsely believe that p.3 Even if S tracks the truth concerning the proposition p, the variation condition is not satisfied concerning the proposition'S doesn't believe falsely that p'. S would still believe that he doesn't falsely believe that p even if it were the case that S was believing p falsely. Reread ~ and the following paragraphs and explain in your own words wh;< Nozick thinks that the variation condition, by itself, is too weak to give us~ acceptable definition of knowledge. There can be cases where the variation condition is met, and yet we would not have a case of knowledge. A case in point is the brain-in-a-vat scenario. Imagine, once again, that a brain in a vat is 'fed' the true belief that it is a brain in a vat. When applying the variation condition we get the following conditional: if (contrary to fact) S were not a brain in a vat, he wouldn't believe that he is a brain in a vat. This condition is indeed met. For if S had not been a brain in a vat, the scientist would not have been able to induce this belief in him via the electrodes to his brain, and hence he would not have E. Sosa, 'Postscript to "Proper Functionalism and Virtue Epistemology" " in J. L. Kvanvig (ed.), Warrant in Contemporary Epistemology (Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), p. 276.

DEFINING KNOWLEDGE

25

believed that he was a brain in a vat. But although the variation condition is met, intuitively it seems wrong to say that S knows that he is a brain in a vat. The problem is, according to Nozick, that S's belief that p is not 'sensitive to the truth' of p. It is nothing but a lucky coincidence that the brain in a vat's belief that it is a brain in a vat is true. If the scientist had stimulated a different part of S's brain he would have had a different belief Explain why a brain in a vat which believes that it is a brain in a vat meets variatjon condition but not the adh(efence condition. For the brain in a vat to meet the adherence condition, it must be the case that in close possible worlds the brain in a vat would believe that it is a brain in a vat. Yet it is possible that the scientist chooses to induce a different belief in the brain in a vat. The scientist could make the brain in a vat believe that it is a tailless kangaroo or that it is someone pretending to own a Ford. And because there are close possible worlds in which a brain in a vat does not believe that it is a brain in a vat, the adherence condition is not met. While the variation condition demands sensitivity to the falsity of p, the adherence condition demands sensitivity to the truth of p. When combined, these conditions ensure that 'beliefs and facts vary together', that S believes that p because p is true. Nozick describes this situation as one in which the belief tracks the truth. Nozick realizes that, as it stands, the adherence condition is too demandIn ing and rules out some obvious cases of knowledge. S can know that p without it being the case that whenever p is true, S believes that p. The variation condition is also too strict. Consider the following case. Suppose you acquire the true belief that Mr Havit owns a Ford and you do so because Mr Havit has shown you the registration papers. But suppose that if he did not own a Ford, you would still have believed that he did because Tom's mother (who, unbeknownst to you, is a notorious liar) would have told you that he did. Intuitively you do know that Mr Havit owns a Ford, even though the variation condition is not met. In Nozick constructs another counterexample to the variation condition. A grandmother might know that her grandchild is well on the basis of good perceptual evidence, but she would still believe that he is well, even if he were sick, because other family members would tell her that he is well. So the adherence condition is not fulfilled even though intuitively the grandmother does know that her grandson is well, if he is well. Nozick deals with these cases by relativizing the variation and adherence condition to a particular method. The method by which S acquires a belief must be held constant from the actual to the possible world. Concerning the first case, in the actual world you rely on perception to come to believe that Mr Havit owns a Ford, whereas in the counterfactual situation you rely on testimony of Tom's mother. Similarly in the second case, if the grandmother would rely only on her perception rather than on testimony of relatives, then she would not believe that her grandchild is well when in fact he is sick. Since in either of the counterexamples there is a shift in belief-formation

lIJ--7

W

26

DEFINING KNOWLEDGE

method between the actual world and the counterfactual situation, relativizing the subjunctive conditionals to a particular method allows Nozick to rule out the counterexamples. When evaluating Nozick's reliabilist analysis of knowledge, we have to examine two kinds of question. First, is the analysis demanding enough so as to ensure that a knower's belief be non-accidentally connected with the fact that makes it true? Second, is the analysis liberal enough so as to include all cases of knowledge? Some critics think that the adherence condition is too strong. To understand their worry, consider a doorbell with a short circuit. 4 Whenever the doorbell rings inside the house, someone is outside pressing the bell-push. But sometimes pressing the bell-push does not result in the bell ringing. Given this scenario, whenever the bell rings, you know that someone is at the door. But when the bell does not ring you cannot be sure whether someone is at the door. Now the question is whether, by hearing the bell ring, you can come to know that there is someone at the door. Since the adherence condition is not fulfilled, Nozick seems to be committed to answer in the negative. Intuitively, however, you do know that someone is at the door when the bell rings. Where does all this leave us? We seem to be caught in a dilemma: if we get rid of the adherence condition, we run into trouble with respect to the brain-in-a-vat scenario. And if we embrace the adherence condition we get counterintuitive results concerning the doorbell example. Some philosophers have taken this and similar problems to indicate that the search for a definition of the concept of knowledge is misguided. Maybe the concept of knowledge has vague boundaries and the only kind of conceptual analysis possible is one where the analysans is as vague as the analysandum. (The analysandum consists of the expression to be analysed and the analysans is the phrase by means of which it is analysed.)

4

This example was suggested to me by Fred Dretske.

2

.Justification and Truth

Introduction to the Problem When one is determining whether someone is justified in holding a certain belief or whether someone knows something, one must do so from some point of view. One can work from the point of view of the subject, or from the point of view of an external observer who knows all the relevant facts, some of which might not be available to the subject. Roughly speaking, those who adopt the subject's point of view for making these evaluations are internalists, and those who adopt a bird's-eye view are externalists. Internalists perform their epistemic evaluations from the firstperson point of view, taking into account only that which is available to the subject at the given time, while externalists evaluate from the point of view of a fully informed spectator. The distinction between internalism and externalism is the most widely used distinction in contemporary epistemology, one that has been applied both to accounts of justification and to accounts of knowledge. In its broadest formulation, internalism about justification is the view that all of the factors required for a belief to be justified must be cognitively accessible to the subject and thus internal to his mind. Something is internal to one's mind so long as one is aware of it or could be aware of it merely by reflecting. Beliefs are the sort of thing that are internal to the mind. Internalists therefore hold that it is the subject's other beliefs which are relevant to the question of whether he is justified in believing that p. The chief motive for internalism is epistemic deontology, i.e., the idea that when one is justified in holding a belief, one has fulfilled one's epistemic duties and obligations in forming that belief. The epistemic duties arise from the goal of believing what is true and not believing what is false. The deomological notion of justification is normative; justification is not something that happens to a person; it is something

28

JUSTIFICATION AND TRUTH

one achieves by one's own efforts. If, therefore, justification is a function of meeting obligations, the factors that determine whether a belief is justified must be internal to the subject's mind. Deontology implies internalism. Externalism about justification is simply the denial of internalism, holding that some of the justifying factors may be external to the subject's cognitive perspective. A belief is justified if it has the property of being truth-effective. This property of being trutheffective may, for example, consist in the belief being produced by a reliable method or process. No more than this is necessary for justification. So whether the subject takes his belief to be truth-effective doesn't add anything to the belief's epistemic status. Internalism about knowledge maintains that, for a justified true belief to be know- [ ledge, the subject must be able to know or at least (justifiably) believe that his belief is justified. According to externalism about knowledge, for a subject to have knowledge the justification condition must hold (in one form or another), but it is not necessary that he be able to know or justifiably believe that it holds. A subject can know without having any reason to think he knows. The most prominent recent externalist theories have been versions of reliabilism. While externalism is only a negative thesis consisting in the denial that justification and knowledge are completely internal, reliabilism is a positive thesis maintaining that what qualifies a belief as knowledge or as justified is its reliable linkage to the facts that make the belief true. A belief amounts to knowledge if it is true and it is formed in a way that it leads to a high proportion of true beliefs. What makes this view externalist is the absence of any requirement that the knower have any sort of cognitive access to, any appreciation of, the relation of reliability that makes his true belief knowledge. In the context of Nozick's tracking account of knowledge, we saw that the reliability of a belief-producing process is not just a property of its actual performance but also of its possible performances. If it is nothing but an odd coincidence that a belief-producing process generates truths, then we wouldn't call it a reliable process. To rule out accidentally truth-producing processes, we need to examine the performance of a belief-formation process in a possible world. For this reason philosophers use subjunctive conditionals such as 'if p were not true, then S would not believe that p' to determine whether the relation between a belief and the facts that make it true is or isn't reliable. The subjunctive conditional reveals whether the belief also would be true under other conditions. A method of belief acquisition is reliable if and only if it produces true beliefs in the actual world and would produce true beliefs in relevantly similar possible worlds. Reliabilism comes in different flavours. The most popular version of reliabilism and the one discussed in this chapter is process reliabilism. Goldman's article, 'What is Justified BelieD', reprinted here, is a paradigmatic presentation of this pOsition. Process reliabilism determines the justificatory status of a belief on the basis of the reliability of the process by which the belief is formed, revised, or maintained. A belief is justified if it is formed by a process whose operation generates a vast majority of true beliefs. Consider the belief-formation process of visual perception.


29

Suppose that S is endowed with 20-20 vision and a large proportion of his visually induced beliefs are true. Given process reliabilism, these beliefs are highly justified. S doesn't need to know or be aware that his visual apparatus is highly reliable; it is enough that his visual belief-formation process is in fact reliable. So S's visually induced beliefs would count as justified even if S were a young child or a higher animal such as a dog. This is still only a rough sketch of process reliabilism. In order to make it more precise we would need to take into consideration the suitability of the belief-forming process. Just as there is no method which is useful for everything, the reliability of belief-formation processes is restricted to certain areas or subject matters. So, even though S's perceptual vision is highly reliable, it doesn't allow him to decide, say, whether the piano is playing in G major or G minor. And even when a reliable beliefforming process is used appropriately, it may fail to yield true beliefs because the circumstances are not right. For example, S's reliable faculty of vision will not generate true beliefs if S is placed in a pitch-dark room. To say that a belief-forming process is reliable is to say that it yields mostly true beliefs in normal drcumstances (and in slightly altered circumstances). There are three principal criticisms of process reliabilism. The first criticism (frequently referred to as the meta-incoherence problem) raises the issue of whether the reliability of a belief-formation process is sufficient for justification. The second criticism (called the new evil-demon probleml) concerns the necessity of reliability for justification. If all of our perceptual beliefs are unreliably produced because we live in an evil-demon world, wouldn't we still be justified in holding our perceptual beliefs true? According to the third objection (called the generality problem), it is not possible to define the belief-forming processes which count as reliable in a way that is neither too broad nor too narrow. Since Foley, in the article reprinted here, discusses the second and third but not the first objection, I will briefly explain it. Is the fact that a belief has been reliably produced sufficient for its justification? The following example is intended to show that it is not. 2 Imagine someone who possesses a sixth sense of clairvoyance. Further suppose that this clairvoyant sense is remarkably reliable. Given externalist reliabilism, S might suddenly know that p, even though he has no evidence either way on whether p is true, on whether he possesses the power of clairvoyance, and on whether such a power is even possible. Internalists claim that the belief in question fails to be justified, despite the claim of reliabilism to the contrary. The belief fails to be justified because, from S's perspective, it is an accident that it is true. The upshot is supposed to be that epistemic justification requires that the acceptance of the belief in question be rational, which in turn requires that the believer be aware of a reason for thinking that the belief is true.

The old evil-demon problem is the demon hypothesis which Descartes uses to motivate external-world scepticism. See Chapter 6 on scepticism. Z See L. Bonjour, The Structure of Empirical Knowledge (Harvard University Press, 1985), ch. 3.

30


Every philosophical argument is open to legitimate objections. This also applies to the anti-reliabilist argument from clairvoyance. Some epistemologists deny that the clairvoyance case actually poses a threat to reliabilism. Try to defe The intuitive plausibility of the clairvoyance case hinges on the presumption that clairvoyance is not reliable. Yet if a clairvoyant faculty actually existed, then either it would prove itself reliable or not. If it proved itself reliable, then intuitively there would be no reason to deny clairvoyants justification and knowledge. The internalist interpretation of the thought experiment presupposes a bias against clairvoyance. A reliabilist could also bite the bullet and insist that S the clairvoyant is in fact justified in believing that p. There is a difference between a person being justified in holding a belief and the belief itself being justified. S only lacks the former, but not the latter kind of justification. He has perfectly good reasons for knowing that p, but he lacks reasons for claiming that he knows this. A more conciliatory response to the challenge to reliabilism posed by the clairvoyance case is to maintain that a justified belief resulting from a reliable beliefforming process must not be undermined by any other evidence the subject possesses. This thesis ensures that for a belief to become knowledge it must not be incoherent with the background information the subject possesses.

Introduction to Goldman Alvin Ira Goldman is professor of philosophy at Rutgers University and works primarily in epistemology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science. He is the most prominent proponent of externalist process reliabilism, which defines the justificatory status of a belief in terms of the reliability of the process that caused it. Goldman's larger programme for reliabilist epistemology rests on two distinctions. First, he distinguishes between individual epistemology and social epistemology (or epistemics). Both branches identify and assess belief-formation processes in terms of their contribution to the production of true belief. While individual epistemology evaluates processes that occur with the epistemic subject, social epistemology evaluates social processes by which subjects exert influence on the beliefs of other subjects. Second, Goldman distinguishes between normative epistemology and descriptive epistemology. The latter branch aims to come up with psychologically explanatory theories of how and why ordinary subjects form the beliefs that we do. Normative epistemology evaluates ordinary belief-forming processes and practices for their justification and reliability and formulates suggestions for improving them. Goldman has developed all four branches of his reliabilist project. Apart from numerous articles, he has written five epistemological books: Epistemology and Cognition (1986), Liaisons: Philosophy Meets the Cognitive and Social Sciences (1992),


31

Philosophical Applications of Cognitive Science (1993), Knowledge in a Social World (1999), and Pathways to Knowledge: Private and Public (2002).

Alvin I. Goldman, CWhat is Justified Beliefr

0--7

The aim of this paper is to sketch a theory of justified belief. What I have in mind is an explanatory theory, one that explains in a general way why certain beliefs are counted as justified and others as unjustified. Unlike some traditional approaches, I do not try to prescribe standards for justification that differ from, or improve upon, our ordinary standards. I merely try to explicate the ordinary standards, which are, I believe, quite different from those of many classical, e.g., 'Cartesian', accounts. Many epistemologists have been interested in justification because of its presumed close relationship to knowledge. This relationship is intended to be preserved in the conception of justified belief presented here. In previous papers on knowledge, 1 I have denied that justification is necessary for . knowing, but there I had in mind 'Cartesian' accounts of justification. On the account of justified belief suggested here, it is necessary for knowing, and closely related to it. The term 'justified', I presume, is an evaluative term, a term of appraisal. Any correct definition or synonym of it would also feature evaluative terms. I assume that such definitions or synonyms might be given, but I am not interested in them. I want a set of substantive conditions that specify when a belief is justified. Compare the moral term 'right'. This might be defined in other ethical terms or phrases, a task appropriate to meta-ethics. The task of normative ethics, by contrast, is to state substantive conditions for the rightness of actions. Normative ethics tries to specify non-ethical conditions that determine when an action is right. A familiar example is act-utilitarianism, which says an action is right if and only if it produces, or would produce, at least as much net happiness as any alternative open to the agent. These necessary and sufficient conditions clearly involve no ethical notions. Analogously, I want a theory of justified belief to specify in nonepistemic terms when a belief is justified. This is not the only kind of theory of justifiedness one might seek, but it is one important kind of theory and the kind sought here. In order to avoid epistemic terms in our theory, we must know which terms are epistemic. Obviously, an exhaustive list cannot be given, but here

'A Causal Theory of Knowing,' The Journal of Phllosophy 64, 12 (June 22, 1967): 357-372; 'Innate Knowledge: in S. P. Stich, ed., Innate Ideas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975); and 'Discrimination and Perceptual Knowledge,' The Journal of Philosophy 73, 20 (November 18, 1976), 771-79l.

32

~


are some examples: 'justified', 'warranted', 'has (good) grounds', 'has reason (to believe)', 'knows that', 'sees that', 'apprehends that', 'is probable' (in an epistemic or inductive sense), 'shows that', 'establishes that', and 'ascertains that'. By contrast, here are some sample non-epistemic expressions: 'believes that', 'is true', 'causes', 'it is necessary that', 'implies', 'is deducible from', and 'is probable' (either in the frequency sense or the propensity sense). In general, (purely) doxastic, metaphysical, modal, semantic, or syntactic expressions are not epistemic. There is another constraint I wish to place on a theory of justified belief, in addition to the constraint that it be couched in non-epistemic language. Since I seek an explanatory theory, i.e., one that clarifies the underlying source of justificational status, it is not enough for a theory to state 'correct' necessary and sufficient conditions. Its conditions must also be appropriately deep or revelatory. Suppose, for example, that the following sufficient condition of justified belief is offered: 'IfS senses redly at t and S believes at t that he is sensing redly, then S's belief at t that he is sensing redly is justified.' This is not the kind of principle I seek; for, even if it is correct, it leaves unexplained why a person who senses redly and believes that he does, believes this justifiably. Not every state is such that if one is in it and believes one is in it, this belief is justified. What is distinctive about the state of sensing redly, or 'phenomenal' states in general? A theory ofjustified beliefof the kind I seek must answer this question, and hence it must be couched at a suitably deep, general, or abstract level. A few introductory words about my explicandum are appropriate at this juncture. It is often assumed that whenever a person has a justified belief, he knows that it is justified and knows what the justification is. It is further assumed that the person can state or explain what his justification is. On this view, a justification is an argument, defense, or set of reasons that can be given in support of a belief. Thus, one studies the nature of justified beliefby considering what a person might say if asked to defend, or justify, his belief. I make none of these sorts of assumptions here. I leave it an open question whether, when a belief is justified, the believer knows it is justified. I also leave it an open question whether, when a belief is justified, the believer can state or give a justification for it. I do not even assume that when a belief is justified there is something 'possessed' by the believer which can be called a 'justification'. I do assume that a justified belief gets its status of being justified from some processes or properties that make it justified. In short, there must be some justification-conferring processes or properties. But this does not imply that there must be an argument, or reason, or anything else, 'possessed' at the time of belief by the believer. A theory of justified belief will be a set of principles that specify truthconditions for the schema rS's belief in p at time tis justified,l i.e., conditions for the satisfaction of this schema in all possible cases. It will be convenient to formulate candidate theories in a recursive or inductive format, which


33

would include (A) one or more base clauses, (B) a set of recursive clauses (possibly null), and (C) a closure clause. In such a format, it is permissible for the predicate 'is a justified belief' to appear in recursive clauses. But neither this predicate, nor any other epistemic predicate, may appear in (the antecedent of) any base clause.* Correct principles of justified belief must be principles that make causal requirements, where 'cause' is construed broadly to include sustainers as well as initiators of belief (i.e., processes that determine, or help to overdetermine, a belief's continuing to be held.)* The need for causal requirements is not restricted to base-clause principles. Recursive principles will also need a causal component. One might initially suppose that the following is a good recursive principle: 'If 5 justifiably believes q at t, and q entails p, and 5 believes p at t, then 5's belief in p at t is justified'. But this principle is unacceptable. 5's belief in p doesn't receive justificational status simply from the fact that p is entailed by q and 5 justifiably believes q. If what causes 5 to believe p at t is entirely different, 5's belief in p may well not be justified. Nor can the situation be remedied by adding to the antecedent the condition that 5 justifiably believes that q entails p. Even if he believes this, and believes q as well, he might not put these beliefs together. He might believe p as a result of some other wholly extraneous, considerations. So ... , conditions that fail to require appropriate causes of a belief don't guarantee justifiedness. Granted that principles of justified belief must make reference to causes of belief, what kinds of causes confer justifiedness? We can gain insight into this problem by reviewing some faulty processes of belief-formation, i.e., processes whose belief-outputs would be classed as unjustified. Here are some examples: confused reasoning, wishful thinking, reliance on emotional attachment, mere hunch or guesswork, and hasty generalization. What do these faulty processes have in common? They share the feature of unreliability: they tend to produce error a large proportion of the time. By contrast, which species of belief-forming (or belief-sustaining) processes are intuitively justification-conferring? They include standard perceptual processes, remembering, good reasoning, and introspection. What these processes seem to have in common is reliability: the beliefs they produce are generally true. My positive proposal, then, is this. The justificational status of a belief is a function of the reliability of the process or processes that cause it, where (as a first approximation) reliability consists in the tendency of a process to produce beliefs that are true rather than false. To test this thesis further, notice that justifiedness is not a purely categorical concept, although I treat it here as categorical in the interest of simplicity. We can and do regard certain beliefs as more justified than others. Furthermore, our intuitions of comparative justifiedness go along with our beliefs about the comparative reliability of the belief-causing processes.

34


Consider perceptual beliefs. Suppose Jones believes he has just seen a mountain-goat. Our assessment of the belief's justifiedness is determined by whether he caught a brief glimpse of the creature at a great distance, or whether he had a good look at the thing only 30 yards away. His belief in the latter sort of case is (ceteris paribus) more justified than in the former sort of case. And, if his belief is true, we are more prepared to say he knows in the latter case than in the former. The difference between the two cases seems to be this. Visual beliefs formed from brief and hasty scanning, or where the perceptual object is a long distance off, tend to be wrong more often than visual beliefs formed from detailed and leisurely scanning, or where the object is in reasonable proximity. In short, the visual processes in the former category are less reliable than those in the latter category. A similar point holds for memory beliefs. A belief that results from a hazy and indistinct memory impression is counted as less justified than a belief that arises from a distinct memory impression, and our inclination to classifY those beliefs as 'knowledge' varies in the same way. Again, the reason is associated with the comparative reliability of the processes. Hazy and indistinct memory impressions are generally less reliable indicators of what actually happened; so beliefs formed from such impressions are less likely to be true than beliefs formed from distinct impressions. Further, consider beliefs based on inference from observed samples. A belief about a population that is based on random sampling, or on instances that exhibit great variety, is intuitively more justified than a belief based on biased sampling, or on instances from a narrow sector of the population. Again, the degree of justifiedness seems to be a function of reliability. Inferences based on random or varied samples will tend to produce less error or inaccuracy than inferences based on nonrandom or non-varied samples. Returning to a categorical concept of justifiedness, we might ask just how reliable a belief-forming process must be in order that its resultant beliefs be justified. A precise answer to this question should not be expected. Our conception of justification is vague in this respect. It does seem clear, however, that peifect reliability isn't required. Belief-forming processes that sometimes produce error still confer justification. It follows that there can be justified beliefs that are false. I have characterized justification-conferring processes as ones that have a 'tendency' to produce beliefs that are true rather than false. The term 'tendency' could refer either to actual long-run frequency, or to a 'propenSity', i.e., outcomes that would occur in merely possible realizations of the process. Which of these is intended? Unfortunately, I think our ordinary conception of justifiedness is vague on this dimension too. For the most part, we simply assume that the 'observed' frequency of truth versus error would be approximately replicated in the actual long-run, and also in relevant counterfactual situations, i.e., ones that are highly 'realistic', or conform closely to the circumstances of the actual world. Since we


[f}-7

35

ordinarily assume these frequencies to be roughly the same, we make no concerted effort to distinguish them. Since the purpose of my present theorizing is to capture our ordinary conception of justifiedness, and since our ordinary conception is vague on this matter, it is appropriate to leave the theory vague in the same respect. We need to say more about the notion of a belief-forming 'process'. Let us mean by a 'process' a functional operation or procedure, i.e., something that generates a mapping from certain states - 'inputs' - into other states 'outputs'. The outputs in the present case are states of believing this or that proposition at a given moment. On this interpretation, a process is a type as opposed to a token. This is fully appropriate, since it is only types that have statistical properties such as producing truth 80% of the time; and it is precisely such statistical properties that determine the reliability of a process. Of course, we also want to speak of a process as causing a belief, and it looks as if types are incapable of being causes. But when we say that a belief is caused by a given process, understood as a functional procedure, we may interpret this to mean that it is caused by the particular inputs to the process (and by the intervening events 'through which' the functional procedure carries the inputs into the output) on the occasion in question. What are some examples of belief-forming 'processes' construed as functional operations? One example is reasoning processes, where the inputs include antecedent beliefs and entertained hypotheses. Another example is functional procedures whose inputs include desires, hopes, or emotional states of various sorts (together with antecedent beliefs). A third example is a memory process, which takes as input beliefs or experiences at an earlier time and generates as output beliefs at a later time. For example, a memory process might take as input a belief at tj that Lincoln was born in 1809 and generate as output a belief at tn that Lincoln was born in 1809. A fourth example is perceptual processes. Here it isn't clear whether inputs should include states of the environment, such as the distance of the stimulus from the cognizer, or only events within or on the surface of the organism, e.g., receptor stimulations. I shall return to this point in a moment. A critical problem concerning our analysis is the degree of generality of the process-types in question. Input-output relations can be specified very broadly or very narrowly, and the degree of generality will partly determine the degree of reliability. A process-type might be selected so narrowly that only one instance of it ever occurs, and hence the type is either completely reliable or completely unreliable. (This assumes that reliability is a function of actual frequency only.) If such narrow process-types were selected, beliefs that are intuitively unjustified might be said to result from perfectly reliable processes; and beliefs that are intuitively justified might be said to result from perfectly unreliable processes.

36


It is clear that our ordinary thought about process-types slices them broadly, but I cannot at present give a precise explication of our intuitive principles. One plausible suggestion, though, is that the relevant processes are content-neutral. It might be argued, for example, that the process of inferring p whenever the Pope asserts p could pose problems for our theory. If the Pope is infallible, this process will be perfectly reliable; yet we would not regard the belief-outputs of this process as justified. The content-neutral restriction would avert this difficulty. If relevant processes are required to admit as input beliefs (or other states) with any content, the aforementioned process will not count, for its input beliefs have a restricted propositional content, viz., 'the Pope asserts p'. In addition to the problem of 'generality' or 'abstractness' there is the previously mentioned problem of the 'extent' of belief-forming processes. Clearly, the causal ancestry of beliefs often includes events outside the organism. Are such events to be included among the 'inputs' of beliefforming processes? Or should we restrict the extent of belief-forming processes to 'cognitive' events, i.e., events within the organism's nervous system? I shall choose the latter course, though with some hesitation. My general grounds for this decision are roughly as follows. Justifiedness seems to be a function of how a cognizer deals with his environmental input, i.e., with the goodness or badness of the operations that register and transform the stimulation that reaches him. (,Deal with', of course, does not mean purposefol action; nor is it restricted to conscious activity.) A justified belief is, roughly speaking, one that results from cognitive operations that are, generally speaking, good or successful. But 'cognitive' operations are most plausibly construed as operations of the cognitive faculties, i.e., 'informationprocessing' equipment internal to the organism. With these points in mind, we may now advance the following baseclause principle for justified belief. (1)

If S's believing p at t results from a reliable cognltive beliefforming process (or set of processes), then S's belief in p at t is justified.

Since 'reliable belief-forming process' has been defined in terms of such notions as belief, truth, statistical frequency, and the like, it is not an epistemic term. Hence, (1) is an admissible base-clause. It might seem as if (1) promises to be not only a successful base clause, butthe only principle needed whatever, apart from a closure clause. In other words, it might seem as if it is a necessary as well as a sufficient condition ofjustifiedness that a beliefbe produced by reliable cognitive belief-forming processes. But this is not quite correct, given our provisional definition of 'reliability'. Our provisional definition implies that a reasoning process is reliable only if it generally produces beliefs that are true, and similarly, that a memory


37

process is reliable only if it generally yields beliefs that are true. But these requirements are too strong. A reasoning procedure cannot be expected to produce true belief if it is applied to false premisses. And memory cannot be expected to yield a true belief if the original belief it attempts to retain is false. What we need for reasoning and memory, then, is a notion of 'conditional reliability'. A process is conditionally reliable when a sufficient proportion of its output-beliefs are true given that its input-beliefS are true. With this point in mind, let us distinguish beliefdependent and beliefindependent cognitive processes. The former are processes some of whose inputs are belief-states.* The latter are processes none of whose inputs are beliefstates. We may then replace principle (1) with the following two principles, the first a base-clause principle and the second a recursive-clause principle. (2 A )

(2 B )

If S's belief in p at t results (immediately') from a belief-independent process that is (unconditionally) reliable, then S's belief in p at t is justified. If S's belief in p at t results ("immediately") from a belief-dependen t process that is (a tleast) conditionally reliab Ie, and if the beliefs (if any) on which this process operates in producing S's belief in pat t are themselves justified, then S's belief in pat t is justified.*

If we add to (2 A ) and (2B) the standard closure clause, we have a complete theory of justified belief. The theory says, in effect, that a belief is justified if and only it is 'wellformed', i.e., it has an ancestry of reliable and/or conditionally reliable cognitive operations. (Since a dated belief may be over-determined, it may have a number of distinct ancestral trees. These need not all be full of reliable or conditionally reliable processes. But at least one ancestral tree must have reliable or conditionally reliable processes throughou t. ) The theory of justified belief proposed here, then, is an Historical or Genetic theory. It contrasts with the dominant approach to justified belief, an approach that generates what we may call (borrowing a phrase from Robert Nozick) 'Current Time-Slice' theories. A Current Time-Slice theory makes the justificational status of a belief wholly a function of what is true of the cognizer at the time of belief. An Historical theory makes the justificational status of a belief depend on its prior history. Since my Historical theory emphasizes the reliability of the belief-generating processes, it may be called 'Historical Reliabilism.' The theory articulated by (2 A ) and (2 B) might be viewed as a kind of 'Foundationalism: because of its recursive structure. I have no objection to this label, as long as one keeps in mind how different this 'diachronic' form of Foundationalism is from Cartesian, or other 'synchronic' varieties of, Foundationalism.


38

Current Time-Slice theories characteristically assume that the justificational status of a belief is something which the cognizer is able to know or determine at the time of belief. This is made explicit, for example, by 2 Chisholm. The Historical theory I endorse makes no such assumption. There are many facts about a cognizer to which he lacks 'privileged access', and I regard the justificational status of his beliefs as one of those things. This is not to say that a cognizer is necessarily ignorant, at any given moment, of the justificational status of his current beliefs. It is only to deny that he necessarily has, or can get, knowledge or true belief about this status. Just as a person can know without knowing that he knows, so he can have justified belief without knowing that it is justified (or believing justifiably that it is justified.) A characteristic case in which a belief is justified though the cognizer doesn't know that it's justified is where the original evidence for the belief has long since been forgotten. Ifthe original evidence was compelling, the cognizer's original belief may have been justified; and this justificational status may have been preserved through memory. But since the cognizer no longer remembers how or why he came to believe, he may not know that the belief is justified. If asked now to justify his belief, he may be at a loss. Still, the belief is justified, though the cognizer can't demonstrate or establish this.

[h}-7

Let us return, however, to the standard forma t of conceptual analysis, and let us consider a new objection that will require some revisions in the theory advanced until now. According to our theory, a belief is justified in case it is caused by a process that is in fact reliable, or by one we generally believe to be reliable. But suppose that although one of S's beliefs satisfies this condition, S has no reason to believe that it does. Worse yet, suppose S has reason to believe that his belief is caused by an unreliable process (although in fact its causal ancestry is fully reliable). Wouldn't we deny in such circumstances that S's beliefis justified? This seems to show that our analysis, as presently formulated, is mistaken. Suppose that Jones is told on fully reliable authority that a certain class of his memory beliefs are almost all mistaken. His parents fabricate a wholly false story that Jones suffered from amnesia when he was seven but later developed pseudo-memories of that period. Though Jones listens to what his parents say and has excellent reason to trust them, he persists in believing the ostensible memories from his seven-year-old past. Are these memory beliefs justified? Intuitively, they are not justified. But since these beliefs result from genuine memory and original perceptions, which are adequately reliable processes, our theory says that these beliefs are justified.

Cf. R. M. Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge, Second Edition (Prentice-Hall, 1977), pp. 17, 114-116.

JUSTIFICA TION AND TRUTH

39

Can the theory be revised to meet this difficulty? One natural suggestion is that the actual reliability of a belief's ancestry is not enough for justifiedness; in addition, the cognizer must be justified in believing that the ancestry of his belief is reliable. Thus one might think of replacing (2 A ), for example, with (3). (For simplicity, I neglect some of the details of the earlier analysis.) (3)

If S's belief in pat t is caused by a reliable cognitive process, and S justifiably believes at t that his p-belief is so caused, then S's belief in p at t is justified.

It is evident, however, that (3) will not do as a base clause, for it contains the

epistemic term 'justifiably' in its antecedent. A slightly weaker revision, without this problematic feature, might next be suggested, viz., (4)

If S's belief in pat t is caused by a reliable cognitive process, and S believes at t that his p-belief is so caused, then S's belief in pat tis justified.

But this won't do the job. Suppose that Jones believes that his memory beliefs are reliably caused despite all the (trustworthy) contrary testimony of his parents. Principle (4) would be satisfied, yet we wouldn't say that these beliefs are justified. Next, we might try (5), which is stronger than (4) and, unlike (3), formally admissible as a base clause. (5)

If S's belief in pat t is caused by a reliable cognitive process, and S believes at t that his p-belief is so caused, and this meta-belief is caused by a reliable cognitive process, than S's belief in p at t is justified.

A first objection to (5) is that it wrongly precludes unreflective creatures creatures like animals or young children, who have no beliefs about the genesis of their beliefs - from having justified beliefs. If one shares my view that justified belief is, at least roughly, well-formed belief, surely animals and young children can have justified beliefs. A second problem with (5) concerns its underlying rationale. Since (5) is proposed as a substitute for (2A)' it is implied that the reliability of a belief's own cognitive ancestry does not make it justified. But, the suggestion seems to be, the reliability of a meta-beliefs ancestry confers justifiedness on the first-order belief. Why should that be so? Perhaps one is attracted by the idea of a 'trickle-down' effect: if an n+ I-level belief is justified, its justification trickles down to an n-level belief. But even if the trickle-down theory is

40


correct, it doesn't help here. There is no assurance from the satisfaction of (5)'s antecedent that the meta-belief itself is justified. To obtain a better revision of our theory, let us re-examine the Jones case. Jones has strong evidence against certain propositions concerning his past. He doesn't use this evidence, but ifhe were to use it properly, he would stop believing these propositions. Now the proper use of evidence would be an instance of a (conditionally) reliable process. So what we can say about Jones is that he fails to use a certain (conditionally) reliable process that he could and should have used. Admittedly, had he used this process, he would have 'worsened' his doxastic states: he would have replaced some true beliefs with suspension of judgment. Still, he couldn't have known this in the case in question. So, he failed to do something which, epistemically, he should have done. This diagnosis suggests a fundamental change in our theory. The justificational status of a belief is not only a function of the cognitive processes actually employed in producing it; it is also a function of processes that could and should be employed. With these points in mind, we may tentatively propose the following revision of our theory, where we again focus on a base-clause principle but omit certain details in the interest of clarity. 1

'

(6)

If S's belief in p at t results from a reliable cognitive process, and there is no reliable or conditionally reliable process available to S which, had it been used by S in addition to the process actually used, would have resulted in S's not believing p at t, then S's belief in p at t is justified.

There are several problems with this proposal. First, there is a technical problem. One cannot use an additional belief-forming (or doxastic-stateforming) process as well as the original process if the additional one would result in a different doxastic state. One wouldn't be using the original process at all. So we need a slightly different formulation of the relevant counterfactual. Since the basic idea is reasonably clear, however, I won't try to improve on the formulation here. A second problem concerns the notion of 'available' belief-forming (or doxastic-state-forming) processes. What is it for a process to be 'available' to a cognizer? Were scientific procedures 'available' to people who lived in pre-scientific ages? Furthermore, it seems implausible to say that all 'available' processes ought to be used, at least if we include such processes as gathering new evidence. Surely a belief can sometimes be justified even if additional evidence-gathering would yield a different doxastic attitude. What I think we should have in mind here are such additional processes as calling previously acquired evidence to mind, assessing the implications of that evidence, etc. This is admittedly somewhat vague, but here again our ordinary notion of justifiedness is vague, so it is appropriate for our analysans to display the same sort of vagueness.


41

Commentary on Goldman In the paragraph marked ~ Goldman expresses his commitment to naturalism and in paragraph [E}--3> to externalism. Goldman's theory of justification is naturalistic in that it is not the logical or probabilistic relation between the evidence and the target belief that fixes the justificatory status of the latter. Rather, justification is said to consist in the psychological processes causally responsible for a belief. A belief qualifies as justified if it is the product of a belief-formation process that has a high truth ratio. Even a belief in a tautology (e.g., A = A) is not justified if it is formed by blind trust in an unreliable informant or by confused reasoning. Goldman's theory of justification is externalist because he endorses the thesis that the factors responsible for epistemic justification may be external to the subject's cognitive perspective. In paragraph [£}7 Goldman states the basic idea of process reliabilism: S's belief in p is justified if and only if S's believing p results from a reliable cognitive beliefforming process (or set of processes). To call a belief-formation process reliable means that such processes have a tendency to produce true beliefs rather than false ones. Thus, reliably formed beliefs are justified because they are likely to be true. As examples of reliable processes Goldman mentions perception, remembering, good reasoning, and introspection. Examples of unreliable processes are confused reasoning, wishful thinking, reliance on emotional attachment, mere hunch or guesswork, and hasty generalization. In paragraphs [4}-3> and @-3> Goldman explicates two of the key concepts of process reliabilism: 'process' and 'probability'.

Goldman contrasts two interpretations of probability, both of which define probability in terms of the relative frequency of the occurrence of an attribute in a sequence over time. But while one interpretation refers only to the actual (or observed) longrun frequency, the other interpretation also refers to the possible long-run frequency. On the latter view, to say, for instance, that the probability of getting heads with a particular coin is one-half means that, in the potentially infinite sequence of tosses of the coin, the relative frequency with which heads occurs converges to the value onehalf. Goldman intends to capture both notions of probability. For a belief-formation process to be reliable it must produce mostly true beliefs not only in the actual world but also in relevant (or' close') counterfactual situations. In paragraph @-3> Goldman explains that the notion of a belief-forming process is a functional notion. Functional notions are defined in terms of input-output relations. Take, for example, the concept of a key. Keys are defined by what they allow us to do, namely to lock and unlock doors, rather than by the material they are made of or by their shape and size. Analogously, belief-formation processes are not defined in terms of, say, activity patterns in certain parts of the nervous system but rather in terms of their functional roles.

42


Belief-forming processes are to be understood as types rather than tokens. Tokens are concrete particulars while types are abstract universals. Fido, for example, is a token of the type dachshund. Since antiquity, philosophers have debated over whether types or universals exist or whether talk about types is nothing but shorthand for talk about tokens. In the paragraph marked [[}--7 Goldman explains that types of belief-forming processes can be specified more or less broadly. For example, when I look out my office window and see a dog, the cognitive process that produces the belief

reliable is a prerequisite of having epistemically rational beliefs. Alvin Goldman, for instance, defends a view he calls "historical reliabilism." According


45

to Goldman, a person S rationally believes a proposition p only if his belief is caused by a reliable cognitive process. Goldman adds that a proposition p is epistemically rational for S, whether or not it is believed by him, only if there is available to S a reliable cognitive process which if used would result in S's believing p.l Likewise, Marshall Swain, Ernest Sosa, and William Alston all claim that reliability is a prerequisite of epistemic rationality. Swain claims that S rationally believes p only if he has reasons for p which are reliable 2 indicators that p is true. So sa says S rationally believes p only if the belief is the product of an intellectual virtue, where intellectual virtues are stable 3 dispositions to acquire truths. And, Alston says that S rationally believes p only if the belief is acquired or held in such a way that beliefs held in that way are reliable, i.e., mostly true. 4 Each of these philosophers is suggesting that there is some sort oflogical, or conceptual, tie between epistemic rationality and truth. The exact nature of this tie depends on what it means for a cognitive process, or a reason, or an intellectual virtue, to be reliable. But, at least for the moment, let us set aside this question. I will return to it shortly In particular, let us simply assume that each of the above positions suggests (even if each doesn't strictly imply) the thesis that if one gathered into a set all the propositions it is epistemically rational for a person S to believe it would be impossible for the set to contain more falsehoods than truths. Or short of this, let us assume that each suggests the thesis that if one gathered into a set all the propositions which both are epistemically rational for S and are believed by him, it would be impossible for the set to contain more falsehoods than truths. Since this amounts to saying that what a person rationally believes, or what it is rational for him to believe, must be a reliable indicator of what is true, any position which implies such a thesis can be regarded as a version of reliabilism. This is somewhat broader than the usual use of the term "reliabilism". With respect to accounts of rational belief (I will discuss reliabilist accounts of knowledge later), the term often is reserved for accounts which require that a belief be caused, or causally sustained, by a reliable cognitive process. But, for purposes here 1 want to distinguish between the causal component of such accounts and the reliability component. The causal component requires a belief to have an appropriate causal ancestry in

Alvin Goldman, "What Is Justified Belief?" in Justification and Knowledge, ed. G. Pappas (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1979), pp. 1-23. 2 Marshall Swain, "Justification and the Basis of Belief," in Justification and Knowledge, ed. Pappas, pp. 25-49. 3 Ernest Sosa, "The Raft and the Pyramid," in Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. V, eds. French, Uehling, and Wettstein (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980), pp. 3-25. 4 William Alston, "Self-Warrant: A Neglected Form of Privileged Access," American Philosophical Quarterly, 13 (1976), pp. 257-72, especially p. 268.

46


order to be rational. The reliability component requires a belief to have an appropriate relation to truth in order to be rational; in particular, on the present interpretation of reliability, it requires that more of a person's rational beliefs be true than false. The advantage of isolating these components is that it makes obvious the possibility of endorsing a reliability requirement for rationality without endorsing a causal requirement, and vice-versa. It is possible, for example, to endorse noncausal versions of reliabilism. Consider a foundationalist position which implies that S rationally believes p only if either his belief p is incorrigible for him or propositions which are incorrigibly believed by him support p in a way which guarantees that most propositions so supported are true. A position of this sort is plausibly regarded as a reliabilist position, since it implies that a person's rational beliefs must be mostly true. It implies, in other words, that the set of such beliefs is a reliable indicator of what is true. Yet, it is not a causal position. It does not insist that S's belief p be caused or causally sustained in an appropriate way in order to be rational. 5 So, in my broad sense of "reliabilism" both causal and noncausal accounts of rational belief can be versions of reliabilism. Indeed in my broad sense, Hume and Descartes might be plausibly interpreted as reliabilists. My use of "reliabilism" is weak in one other way. It requires only that there be a very loose connection between epistemic rationality and truth. In order for an account to be a version of reliabilism, it need not guarantee that a huge percentage of the propositions a person S rationally believes are true. It need only guarantee that one more such proposition is true than is false. Unfortunately, even when reliabilism is understood in this very weak way, it is too strong; it is possible for more propositions which S rationally believes to be false than true. Consider how this might be so. Consider a world in which S believes, seems to remember, experiences, etc., just what he in this world believes, seems to remember, experiences, etc., but in which his beliefs are often false. Suppose further that in this other world the confidence with which he believes, and the clarity with which he seems to remember, and the intensity with which he experiences is identical with the actual world. Suppose even that what he would believe on reflection (about, e.g., what arguments are likely to be truth preserving) is identical with what he would believe on reflection in this world. So, if S somehow were to be switched instantaneously from his actual situation to the corresponding situation in this other world, he would not distinguish any difference, regardless of how hard he tried. To use the familiar example, suppose that a demon insures that this is the case. Call such a demon world "w" and then consider this question: Could some of the propositions which a person S I discuss causal, reliabilist accounts of knowledge in Section II. The arguments there also will apply to causal, reliabilist accounts of rational belief. See especially footnote 7.


47

believes in w be epistemically rational for him? For example, could some of the propositions which 5 perceptually believes be epistemically rational? The answer is «yes". If we are willing to grant that in our world some of the propositions 5 perceptually believes are epistemically rational, then these same propositions would be epistemically rational for 5 in w as well. After all, world w by hypothesis is one which from 5's viewpoint is indistinguishable from this world. So, if given 5's situation in this world his perceptual belief p is rational, his belief p would be rational in w as well. In one sense this is not a particularly surprising result, but in another sense it can seem somewhat surprising. Notice that the possibility of there being such a world w follows from the fact that our being in the epistemic situation we are is compatible with our world being w. This in no way shows that it is not epistemically rational for us to believe what we do. But, and this is what might seem somewhat surprising, if the mere possibility of our world being a demon world is not sufficient to defeat the epistemic rationality of our believing what we do, then neither should the actuality. Even if, contrary to what we believe, our world is world w, it still can be epistemically rational for us to believe many of the propositions we do, since the epistemic situation in world w is indistinguishable from the epistemic situation in a world which has the characteristics we take our world to have. The point here is a simple one. In effect, I am asking you: aren't some of the propositions you believe epistemically rational for you to believe? And wouldn't whatever it is that make those propositions epistemically rational for you also be present in a world where these propositions are regularly false, but where a demon hid this from you by making the world from your viewpoint indistinguishable from this world (so that what you believed, and what you would believe on reflection, and what you seemed to remember, and what you experienced were identical to this world)? I think that the answer to each of these questions is «yes" and I think you do too. But, a «yes" answer to these questions suggests that the real lesson illustrated by the possibility of demon worlds is not a skeptical lesson as is sometimes thought, but rather an anti-reliabilist lesson. It suggests, in other words, that the demon by his deceits may cause us to have false beliefs, but he does not thereby automatically cause us to be irrational. And so, the possibility of such demon worlds illustrates that it is possible for more of what we rationally believe to be false than to be true, and it also illustrates that it is possible for more of what it is epistemically rational for us to believe (regardless of what we do in fact believe) to be false than to be true. Correspondingly, it illustrates that any version of reliabilism which implies that these are not genuine possibilities ought to be rejected. Indeed, in one sense the claim that it is possible for more of what we rationally believe to be false than to be true is not even very controversial. It is but an extension of the claim that it is possible to rationally believe a

48


falsehood. For if we admit that there are situations in which the conditions making a proposition epistemically rational are present but the conditions making it true are not, we will be hard-pressed to avoid the conclusion that it is possible for this to happen frequently. To put the matter metaphorically, if we allow the possibility of a crack developing between epistemic rationality and truth, such that some of what is epistemically rational can be false, we will be hard-pressed to avoid at least the possibility of a chasm developing, such that more of what is epistemically rational can be false than true. This is the lesson of demon examples, brain-in-the-vat examples, etc. The problem with all these versions of reliabilism is essentially the same. They all assume that in the demon worlds described it would be impossible for us to have rational beliefs. The assumption, in other words, is that the deceiving activities of the demon no matter how cleverly they are carried out even if we have no indication that we are (or have been, or will be, or would be) so deceived - preclude even the possibility of our beliefs being epistemically rational. So, the mere fact that we do have, or have had, or will have, or would have false beliefs, implies that we cannot be epistemically rational. But, to make such an assumption is counterintuitive. In everyday situations we do not regard deception as precluding rationality Likewise, we do not regard the fact that we have been deceived, or will be deceived, or would be deceived, as precluding rationality. Suppose I play an elaborate practical joke on you in order to get you to believe that I have left town. I tell you I am leaving town, I leave my car with you, I have someone send you a postcard signed by me, etc. My deceits may get you to believe the false proposition that I have left town, but from this it does not follow that the proposition is not rational for you to believe. And one way to emphasize this point is to imagine (as I have done with the demon cases) a situation in which you have not been deceived and which in addition from your viewpoint is indistinguishable from the situation in which you have been deceived. In other words, imagine an ordinary situation. If in this ordinary situation it is possible for you to rationally believe that I have left town, it also is possible for you to rationally believe this in the situation in which I have deceived you. Everyone who allows rational beliefs to be false should agree to this. But then, it is natural to wonder why, if relatively modest deceits of this sort need not preclude the possibility of you having rational beliefs, more elaborate deceits of the sort a demon engages in should preclude you from having rational beliefs? The intuitive answer is that they should not. The demon by his deceits may get you to have mostly false beliefs but this need not indicate that these beliefs also are irrational. This answer, moreover, illustrates something about the way we think of rationality. Namely, we think that what it is rational for a person to believe is a function of what it is appropriate for him to believe given his perspective. More exactly, it is a function of what it is

JUSTIFICA TION AND TRUTH

49

appropriate for him to believe given his perspective and insofar as his goal is to believe truths and not to believe falsehoods. 6 Precisely what makes reliabilist accounts of rational belief unacceptable is that they underemphasize this perspectival element. They imply that it is impossible for our beliefs to be rational if they are not in an appropriate sense reliable indicators of truths. And they imply that this is so regardless of what our perspective might be- even if, for example, it is indistinguishable from current perspective. Reliability is not in any plausible sense a necessary condition of epistemic rationality. In order for S's belief p to be rational, it neither is necessary for most rational beliefs of all people everywhere to be true, nor for most of S's current rational beliefs to be true, nor for most of S's rational beliefs over his lifetime to be true, nor for most of the rational beliefs S would have in close counterfactual situations to be true.

II I would guess that for many philosophers (but certainly not all) the remarks I have been making about the relationship between rationality and reliability will not seem surprising. The remarks might even strike them as obvious albeit unimportant. For, they would claim that the epistemic significance of reliability has to do not with beliefs which are merely rational but rather with beliefs which are instances of knowledge. So, they would argue that even if reliability is not a prerequisite of rationality, it is a prerequisite of knowledge. Thus, Goldman, Sosa, Alston, Swain, and others with reliabilist sympathies might be willing to agree with me that there is a sense of rationality for which reliability is not a prerequisite. But, they would go on to insist either that rationality is not a prerequisite of knowledge (i.e., it is possible to know p without rationally believing it) or that the kind of rational belief needed for knowledge is more restrictive than the kind with which I have been concerned. Both of these options leave room for the claim that reliability is a prerequisite of knowledge even if it is not a prerequisite of mere rational belief (or of a certain kind of rational belief). Even so, reliabilist theses about knowledge in the end fare no better than reliabilist theses about rational belief. More exactly, significant, or nontrivial, reliabilist theses about knowledge fare no better. A reliabilist thesis is not significant if it is a thesis which almost any kind of account of knowledge would imply. Thus, suppose it is claimed that reliability is a This, of course, leaves open the question of what exactly makes it appropriate for a person S to believe a proposition given his perspective and given his goal of believing truths and not believing falsehoods.

6

50

[I]--7


prerequlSlte of knowledge in the following sense: Most beliefs which are instances of knowledge have to be true. This thesis about knowledge is true but insignificant; any account of knowledge which requires a belief to be true if it is to be an instance of knowledge implies it. The problem, then, is to find a true and significant reliabilist account of knowledge. I claim it cannot be done; there is no such reliabilist account of knowledge. To see this, consider how one might try to formulate a reliabilist account of knowledge .... Suppose, then, that a reliable cognitive process is one which is relativized to persons. Suppose it is understood to be one which has produced mostly true beliefs for person S. But then, it is possible for S to know that a demon has been deceiving him perceptually but no longer is. And if S does know this, he might very well now know p perceptually even though he also knows that the perceptual process which causes him to believe p is unreliable. The fact that a demon has deceived him perceptually need not make it impossible for him now to have perceptual knowledge. Or, suppose a reliable cognitive process is thought to be one which will in the long-run produce mostly true beliefs for S. But, it is possible for S to know that although he is not now under the control of a deceiving demon, he shortly will be. And if he does know this, he might now perceptually know p even though he also knows that the process which causes him to believe p is unreliable in this sense. For, the fact that a demon will deceive him perceptually need not make it impossible for him now to have perceptual knowledge. Or, suppose a reliable cognitive process is one which would produce mostly true beliefs in appropriately close counterfactual situations. But then, S might know that there is an anti-reliabilist demon who is not now deceiving him but is (and was) prepared to do so had the situation been even a little different. And, knowing that there is such a demon who is poised to act but who does not is compatible with now knowing p. The fact that a demon is prepared to deceive him perceptually does not make it impossible for him to have perceptual knowledge. The same general lesson even applies to a demon who is now deceiving S perceptually. But there is a wrinkle here, since it may be impossible for S to believe (and hence to know) that due to the actions of a deceiving demon more of his current perceptual beliefs are false than are true. This may be impossible because it may be impossible for S to believe a proposition p ifhe also genuinely believes that p is more likely to be false than true. But even if this is impossible, it nonetheless is possible for S to have adequate evidence for the claim that more of his current perceptual beliefs are false than are true (even if he does not believe it to be true) and yet for him to have perceptual knowledge p. Suppose, for example, he has adequate evidence for the truth that a demon is deceiving him with respect to most objects in his visual field but not those directly in front of him and within two feet of him.


51

If proposition p concerns an object of this latter sort, S might very well know p even though he may have adequate reasons for believing the true proposition that the visual process which causes him to believe p is unreliable - i.e., even though more of the S's current visual beliefs are false than true. The fact that a demon is deceiving him perceptually about objects not directly in front of him or not within two feet of him does not make it impossible for him to have perceptual knowledge about objects which are in front of him and within two feet ofhim.7 It may be tempting in this last case to insist that S's belief p is the product of a reliable cognitive process - namely, a process as it operates on objects within two feet of him and directly in front of him. In other words, it may be tempting to insist that this last case only illustrates that we must allow the notion of a reliable cognitive process to be narrowly specified. In the case here, for example, once we specify the process which causes S to believe p as a visual process as operating on objects directly in front of S and within two feet of him, it by hypothesis is true that his belief p is caused by a reliable process. Indeed, in the case here, perhaps the only beliefs produced by this narrowly specified process are the belief that p and beliefs in other propositions implied by p. And of course, by hypothesis all these propositions are true. However, any attempt to save a reliabilist account of knowledge by this kind of maneuver is an attempt to save it by destroying it. For any reliabilist account which results from such a rescue maneuver will be an account which is insignificant. Indeed, it will be as insignificant as a reliabilist account which insists that most beliefs which are instances of knowledge must be true, and it will be insignificant for the same reason. Namely, any proponent of any kind of account of knowledge can endorse a reliabilism of this sort. Or, at least anyone who thinks knowledge requires true belief can endorse a reliabilism of this sort. After all, on any occasion where a person S has a true beliefp, there will be some narrowly specified cognitive process which causes S to believe p and which in addition is reliable, if only because it is so narrowly specified that it produces only belief p and beliefs in propositions implied by p. So, insofar as a reliabilist resorts to such maneuvers to defend his account, his account will lose whatever distinctive character it was intended to have. Reliabilist accounts of knowledge, then, face a dilemma. One horn of the dilemma is to allow the notion of a reliable cognitive process to be specified so narrowly that reliabilism is no longer an interesting thesis. It becomes true but trivial, since any true belief can be construed as being the product of Since in all of the preceding examples S can be assumed to rationally believe p (as well as to know p), the examples also can be used to illustrate the inadequacy of various theses about rational belief. For example, they illustrate that S's believing or having adequate reason to believe that his belief p is caused by a reliable process is not a prerequisite of S's rationally believing p. Likewise, they illustrate that S's belief actually having been caused by a reliable process is not a prerequisite of S's rationally believing p.


52

a reliable cognitive process. The other horn is not to allow the notion of a reliable cognitive process to be so narrowly specified, in which case it becomes susceptible to demon counterexamples and the like. In other words, it becomes an interesting but false thesis.

III I have not discussed every possible reliabilist thesis concerning rational belief and knowledge. But, I have discussed a number of representative theses, and neither they nor any other reliabilist thesis I can think of can avoid the difficulties raised for them by demon situations and the like. And so, I conclude that reliability is neither a necessary condition of rational belief (i.e., it is not necessary for more of a person's rational beliefs to be true than false) nor a necessary condition of knowledge (i.e., a belief in order to be an instance of knowledge need not be the product of a reliable cognitive process - provided "reliable" is used in a nontrivial way). ~

All this, however, is not to say that considerations of reliability are altogether unimportant epistemically. As I suggested earlier, epistemic rationality is best understood to be a function of what it is appropriate for a person to believe given his perspective and given the goal of his having true beliefs and not having false beliefs. So, the goal in terms of which epistemic rationality can be understood is the goal of having reliable beliefs - i.e., mostly true beliefs. But, to say that reliability is the goal in terms of which epistemic rationality is to be understood is not to say that achieving that goal is a prerequisite of being epistemically rational. If a person, given his situation, believes what it is appropriate for him to believe with respect to the goal of his having true beliefs and not having false beliefs, then his beliefs can be epistemically rational even if they are mostly false. This is the lesson of demon examples and the like. Likewise, nothing I have said implies that reliability is not an important consideration in understanding knowledge. Indeed, I think that reliability can be a crucial part of a set of conditions sufficient for knowledge. Recall D. H. Lawrence's story of the boy who when he rides his rocking horse is able unfailingly to pick the winners at a local race track. It is plausible to think that such a boy somehow knows who the winners will be,S and it is plausible to suppose this even if we also suppose that the boy has not been told that his picks are always correct. In other words, it is plausible to suppose that the

8 The story is cited by Roderick Firth, 'Are Epistemic Concepts Reducible to Ethical Ones," in Values and Morals, eds. A. Goldman and J. Kim (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1978),

pp.215-29.


53

boy somehow knows who the winners will be even if he lacks adequate evidence for his picks. Two lessons are suggested by such cases. First, in order to have knowledge it is not necessary to have a rational belief as has been traditionally claimed. At the very least, this is not necessary in one important sense of rational belief - viz. one which makes rational belief a function of having adequate evidence. Second, having a true belief which is caused by a highly reliable cognitive process can be sufficient for knowledge. Or at least, it can be sufficient with the addition of a few other relatively minor conditions. 9 The mistake reliabilists tend to make is to try to draw a third lesson from such cases. Namely, they try to conclude that a necessary condition of a person 5's knowing p is that his belief p be reliably produced.

Commentary on Foley The first thing to notice is that, instead of talking about justification and justified belief, Foley is talking about rationality and rational belief. 'Rationality' is many things to many people. In the passages marked WJ--3> and [I}-3> Foley defines a rational belief as a belief that is appropriate for a subject to have 'given his perspective' - appropriate relative to the subject's goal to believe truths and avoid falsehoods. In The Theory of Epistemic Rationality (1987, p. 66), he explains the notion of a perspective in terms of reflection: a rational belief is a belief such that, on sufficient reflection, 5 thinks that holding that belief is an effective means to his epistemic end of having true beliefs. Since rationality is said to depend on reflection and since one can only reflect on things one is aware of, Foley seems to presuppose, from the outset, internalism about justification. If this observation were correct, then Foley's critique of reliabilism would beg the question by assuming what is at issue. But for now let's apply the principle of charity and suppose that Foley's notion of rationality is the same as our commonsensical notion of justification. Do you agree with the characterization of Goldman's position of his.toj@i~:) . reliabilism in the paragraph mar~e.d~? Interestingly, Foley omits the internalist aspects of historical reliabilism. Goldman (in paragraph [I}-3> in his section above) concedes to internalism that it may not be the case that the bearer of a justified belief has reasons for thinking that the belief is not justified - even if the belief is in fact caused by a reliable cognitive process. This 9 Perhaps, for example, it would not be plausible to say that the boy on the rocking horse knows who the winners will be if he has adequate evidence for the (false) proposition that the process which causes him to think some horse will win is unreliable. Thus, perhaps something at last roughly resembling the following conditions are sufficient for 5's knowing p: S belief p is true, it is caused by a highly reliable process R, and S does not have adequate evidence for believing R is not highly reliable.

54


concession leads Goldman to add a negative coherence condition to his reliabilist analysis of epistemic justification. Do you agree with the general characterization of reliabilism in the paragraph marked~? Foley defines reliabilism as 'the thesis that if one gathered into a set all the propositions which both are epistemically rational for S and are believed by him, it would be impossible for the set to contain more falsehoods than truths' (paragraph ~). We saw that Foley defines rationality in terms of the subject reflectively taking his belief to be true. Obviously, not everything a subject takes to be true is true. Thinking doesn't make it so. The above definition of reliabilism, however, seems to pass swiftly from the presumed truth of a proposition to its actually being true. Since this move is highly contentious, the question arises whether Foley'S characterization of reliabilism is correct. Go back to the introduction to this chapter and compare the account of reliabilism given there with Foley's account of reliabilism. Section I of the article is devoted to (what others call) the new evil-demon problem, section II concerns, among other things, the generality problem (again not Foley's term), and section III draws a conclusion. The new evil-demon problem challenges the necessity of the reliabilist justification/ rationality condition by constructing cases where this condition is not satisfied, but where the believer seems intuitively to be justified/ rational. Suppose two people are psychologically and neurologically indistinguishable and they also possess the same beliefs. If it is rational for one of them to believe that p, so it is for the other. But now suppose that one of them lives in the normal world while the other one lives in a demon world, in which most of his beliefs are false. Foley is claiming that while most of the beliefs of the person in the demon world are false, it is equally rational for both agents to believe what they do believe. For the person in the demon world has exactly the same reasons for forming his beliefs. So if the beliefs of the person in the normal world are rational, so are the beliefs of the person in the demon world. But since the beliefs of the person in the demon world are not reliably formed - most of them are false - reliability is not a necessary condition for epistemic rationality. In paragraph [£]--;> and following, Foley formulates the lesson of the new evildemon problem: reliabilism denies a victim of an evil demon rational beliefs and thereby contradicts the intuition according to which deception does not preclude rationality. Rationality isn't a matter, as the reliabilist insists, of the external relations that exist between the believer and his world. The mistake of reliabilism is to disregard the perspectival or reflective element of rationality. How could a proponent of externalist reliabilism reply to the new evil-demon problem? The reliabilist could simply bite the bullet and deny the intuition according to which the victim of the evil demon is as justified as a subject who inhabits an epistemically


55

friendly environment. If epistemic justification consists in beliefs being reliably formed, then dupes of demons do not have justified beliefs. The fact that, from their points of view, it is still rational to believe the things they do believe is irrelevant for the issue of justification. So the reliabilist will want to dissociate justification from rationality: evaluations regarding rationality are made from a first-person point of view; evaluations regarding justification are made from a third-person point of view. By identifying rationality and justification, Foley presupposes that our theory of justification has an internalist element. In Epistemology and Cognition (1986, p. 113), Goldman offers a more conciliatory response to the evil-demon problem. He proposes modifications to historical reliabilism that are aimed at granting inhabitants of the demon world justified beliefs. The idea is that the reliability of a belief-formation process is determined by the proportion of true beliefs it produces in normal worlds. 'Normal worlds' are defined as those that are consistent with our general beliefs about our actual world. So normal worlds are epistemically friendly worlds. Despite the victim of an evil demon routinely having false beliefs, those beliefs are nonetheless justified because his belief-formation processes would generally produce true beliefs in the normal world. you think the normal-worlds response to the new evil-demon successful? It is questionable whether the normal-world response to the new evil-demon problem accounts for the internalist intuition it is meant to account for. The intuition driving the problem is that the demon victim's beliefs are justified in the very environment he inhabits, not merely that they would be justified if he lived in a quite different environment. Goldman himself became aware of this point and has since abandoned normal-worlds reliabilism. While section I tries to establish that reliability isn't necessary for rationality / justification, section II attempts to show that reliability isn't necessary for knowledge. Foley argues that a reliability theory of knowledge has no way to specify the (reliable) process which is supposed to confer knowledge. Either the process is specified so narrowly (this kind of process, the one that produced this true belief) that every process turns out to be reliable, or demon-world counterexamples are easily multiplied. The problem of providing an account of process types that are reliable is called the generality problem. In the paragraph marked @7 Foley sets up the generality problem by imagining situations in which S knows something via process X but also knows that X is an unreliable belief-formation process. He imagines situations in which S knows that he has been deceived by a demon but no longer is, and a situation in which S knows that he shortly will be deceived by a demon but is not now, and a situation in which S knows that in close counterfactual situations he would be deceived by a demon even though he is not being deceived by the demon in the actual situation. These thought experiments raise the question of how we are to identify which types of cognitive processes count as reliable.

56


When types of cognitive processes are identified too broadly, no belief can count as justified. For there is no process type that reliably produces true beliefs no matter what the circumstances are. Take, for example, colour vision. Colour vision only gives us justified beliefs when the lighting conditions are standard. Yet in darkness and in illumination by coloured lights, colour vision is not a reliable process type. So for a process type to be reliable it needs to be identified at some level of specificity. But when process types are described too narrowly (e.g., 'a process as it operates on objects within two meters of S and directly in front of him'), then it may produce only a single token. If a process type only has one token and that token produces a true belief, then the process type is reliable and the belief qualifies as justified. But it conflicts with our most basic epistemic intuitions to claim that the truth of the belief is a sufficient condition for the belief being justified. For then accidentally true beliefs would have to count as justified and false beliefs would automatically be unjustified. So the generality problem calls for a way of identifYing process types that is neither too broad nor too narrow. But how should we identifY process types short of total specificity? Foley is sceptical that this can be done. This is still an open issue for process reliabilism. generality problem a knock-down argument ag~i~;;reliabilism or are for the reliabilist to circumvent this problem? Process reliabilism is the most widespread form of reliabilism, but it is not the only one. While process reliabilism takes the epistemic status of a belief to depend on the reliability of the belief-formation process, indicator reliabilism takes this status to depend on the reliability of the reasons upon which the target belief is based. In this view, a belief is justified if it is based on a reliable indication or conclusive reason. A conclusive reason for p is defined as some condition or fact that would not be the case unless p were true. To know that p one must have reasons one would not have unless what one believes were true. This theory is externalist because a person, in order to know that p, need not know (or be justified in believing) that the reason for why he holds p is conclusive. Since indicator reliabilism manages without reference to belief-formation processes, it avoids the generality problem. In his conclusion Foley emphasizes that, even though reliability is necessary for neither rationality/justification nor knowledge, reliability may be sufficient. Yet unless externalists can somehow take care of the meta-incoherence problem (discussed in 'Introduction to the Problem'), reliability is not even sufficient for justification.

3

Duties and Virtues

Introduction to the Problem Up to now the selected texts have favoured externalism over internalism. Nozick defends a form of externalism about knowledge and Goldman develops an externalist account of justification. And even though Foley is an internalist in the article reprinted here, he criticizes reliabilism rather than presenting his internalist position. Thus it is high time to take a closer look at epistemic internalism. The article by Steup is a state-of-the-art presentation and defence of an internalist account of justification. The second text of this chapter is an article by Sosa in which he attempts to combine the best features of both the internalist and externalist views while avoiding their pitfalls. As was explained in the previous chapter, the chief motivation for internalism about justification is epistemic deontologism. According to epistemic deontologism, the concept of justification is to be defined in deontic terms, terms such as 'duty', 'obligation', 'permission', and 'freedom from blame'. The deontological concept of justification has it that satisfYing one's intellectual duty or responsibility in relation to the acceptance of a particular belief is a necessary condition for the belief to be epistemically justified. This notion of justification is normative: justification is not something that happens to a person; it is something one achieves by one's own efforts. The exact nature of epistemic duties is a matter of controversy. The basic idea is that epistemic duties arise in connection with the goal of believing what is true and not believing what is false. This raises the question of how an agent is to responsibly pursue the truth. Epistemic de ontologists tend to spell out epistemic responsibility in terms of the agent employing good evidence. S is justified in believing p if and only if S has the epistemic goal of believing truly and, because of this goal, holds the belief that p on the basis of good evidence which indicates the likely truth of p.

58

DUTIES AND VIRTUES

There is a natural connection between internalism about justification and epistemic deontologism. Internalism holds that all of the factors required for a belief to be justified must be cognitively accessible to the subject and thus internal to his mind. According to deontologism, a belief is epistemically responsible if the subject holds it on the basis of good evidence and with the goal of attaining the epistemic end of believing truly. Both the evidence and the goal must, of course, be within the subject's cognitive perspective. Even though internalism is not logically compelled to embrace deontologism, deontologism is the chief motivation for internalism. For if justification is not a matter of following epistemic rules, why should we even care whether we have cognitive access to our justificatory factors? Having awareness of one's evidence only seems to matter if subjects are being praised or blamed for what they believe. The notion of epistemic responsibility presupposes not only awareness of one's beliefs but also voluntary control over them. If one is epistemically responsible for a belief, then it must be within one's power to hold or not to hold that belief. Critics of deontologism argue that because most of our beliefs are involuntary, our beliefs can't be subject to epistemic duty. Prime examples of involuntary beliefs are perceptual and introspective beliefs. Take, for example, your belief that you are seeing a book in front of you. Can you help believing that you are seeing a book? If the answer is 'no', then it seems that the belief can't be subject to epistemic duty. Steup defends epistemic deontologism against objections from involuntariness. Steup also defends deontological internalism against two further externalist charges: first, whether a belief is justified or not is frequently not recognizable on reflection and, second, deontological justification doesn't amount to genuine justification because it is not truth-conducive. Even if Steup were successful in fending off externalist criticisms, it doesn't necessarily follow that internalism is true, for there are also some positive lines of argument in favour of externalism. Some pursue externalism because they think it important to ascribe knowledge to higher animals, small children, unsophisticated adults, and certain artificial cognitive devices. Such ascriptions seem incompatible with internalism, since the beliefs and inferences required by internalism about justification are too complicated to be plausibly ascribed to such subjects. Others pursue externalism because they think it is a good way to naturalize epistemology. Naturalized epistemology doesn't concern itself with how we should form beliefs but with how we do in fact form them. Externalism promises to be a way of eliminating deontological language in epistemology - the language of praise and blame - and substituting natural relations (causal and counterfactual) between beliefs and the environment in our understanding of knowledge and justification. Others embrace externalism because internalism has conspicuously failed to provide defensible, non-sceptical solutions to the classical problems of epistemology, while externalism makes these problems easily solvable. Internalists, of course, think the externalist solution is much too easy. Still others pursue externalism because it yields answers to questions that otherwise remain puzzling. Why, for instance, can one know that p without knowing (or being justified in believing) that one knows it? Because, the externalist replies, knowledge has little

DUTIES AND VIRTUES

59

or nothing to do with subjective justification; it is a matter of standing in the right relations to the facts. Needless to say, there is an internalist reply for each of these arguments for externalism. It is unlikely that there will ever be a conclusive argument in favour of either internalism or externalism. In light of the apparent tie between the two positions, a number of philosophers have thought that we should end the bickering over the 'correct' account of knowledge and justification. Internalism and externalism shouldn't be played off against each other but should somehow be reconciled. What seems to be needed is an intermediate position which admits the truthconducive character of justification while accepting the transparency of evidence. Some epistemologists combine internalism and externalism by distinguishing between knowledge and justification. The idea is simply that internalism is right 1 about justification while externalism is correct about knowledge. The problem with this proposal is that it stands no chance of convincing either party. For both internalists and externalists claim to account for both justification and knowledge. So the real challenge is to come up with parallel internalist and externalist views both for justification alone and for knowledge alone. Another attempt to bridge the gulf between internalism and externalism employs a distinction between conditions for knowing and conditions for saying that someone knows. The idea is that externalism concerns conditions for knowledge, while 2 internalism concerns conditions for the attribution of knowledge. A person may be justified in knowing while not being justified in claiming that he knows, and vice versa. But internalists will, of course, not be happy to be told that their account doesn't concern conditions for knowing but merely conditions for the attribution of knowledge and justification. Yet another strategy is to double the requirements for justification: a person is justified in believing a proposition only if the belief is produced by reliable cognitive faculties and if he has good reasons of which he is aware. 3 Apart from making justified belief a very rare commodity, this proposal is unlikely to convince either internalists or externalists. Internalists will not see the relevance of requiring that beliefs must be caused by reliable processes, and externalists will not see that the transparency condition adds anything to the justificatory status of a belief. Yet another strategy to render internalism and externalism compatible is to claim that externalism provides a convincing account of non-inferential (e.g., perceptual) knowledge, while internalism is appropriate for inferential knowledge. There are at least two problems with this solution. First, since the distinction between inferential and non-inferential knowledge is far from sharp, the proposed marriage between internalism and externalism is bound to lead to contention. (Is inferring a self-conscious affair or could it be automatic? Is any instance of one belief causing another a case of inferring? Does seeing that there is a dachshund before one's eyes involve inference?) E.g. R. Audi, Belief, Justification, and Knowledge (Wadsworth, 1988), p. 114. E.g. K. Bach, 'A Rationale for Reliabilism', Monist 68 (1985), pp. 246-63. E.g. W Alston, 'An Internalist Externalism', Synthese 74 (1988), pp. 265-83.

60

DUTIES AND VIRTUES

Second, because inferential knowledge is frequently based on non-inferential knowledge, it is implausible to suppose that the conditions for inferential knowledge differ in kind from those for non-inferential knowledge. Now, Sosa attempts to combine internalism and externalism by drawing a distinction not between kinds of knowledge but between levels of knowledge. (First-order knowledge is, for example, knowing that there is a dachshund before one's eyes; second-order knowledge is knowing that one knows that there is a dachshund before one's eyes.) Roughly, Sosa's idea is that genuine knowledge ~ or reflective knowledge, as he calls it ~ is a combination of first-order knowledge and second-order knowledge, where first-order knowledge is externalist and second-order knowledge is internalist. Reflective knowledge, according to Sosa, consists in a true first-order belief which is reliably produced as well as in a meta-belief which establishes that the first-order belief is reliably produced and which meets certain internalist, namely coherentist, demands.

Introduction to Steup Matthias Steup is professor of philosophy at St Cloud State University. His main research interest is epistemology. He is the author of An Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology (1996), editor of Knowledge, Truth and Duty (2001), and co-editor (with E. Sosa) of Contemporary Debates in Epistemology (2004). Steup's essay, 'A Defense ofInternalism', grew out of a commentary on Goldman's paper, 'Internalism Exposed' Uournal of Philosophy 96 (1999), pp. 271~93). As the title suggests, Goldman's paper rejects the internalist conception of justification. Steup develops answers to the various problems identified by Goldman. Since Steup explains the (alleged) problems of internalism before attempting to dispel them, his essay can be understood even if one hasn't first read the essay by Goldman.

Matthias Steup, 'A Defense of Internalism~ Internalism and Direct Recognizability In this paper I shall set forth what I take to be a plausible version of internalism and defend it against objections. According to internalism, the things that make beliefs justified or unjustified ~ "J-factors," as we may call them ~ must, in some sense, be internal to the subject. The perhaps strictest way to internalize J-factors is to limit them to beliefs. My own view is that the constraint internalists place on J-factors is more plausibly construed in terms of cognitive accessibility. What qualifies as a J-factor must be something that is cognitively accessible to us in such a way that we can

DUTIES AND VIRTUES

07

61

always tell whether what we believe is justified or not. Following Chisholm, then, I take internalism to be the view that J-factors must be directly recognizable, that is, recognizable on reflection. l I begin by trying to explain what I mean by the phrase "recognizable on reflection." When we recognize something on reflection, the knowledge we obtain in this way is neither exclUSively a priori nor exclUSively introspective. Rather, typically it will be both a priori and introspective. Consider an example. Suppose you are asking yourself whether you're justified in believing that you had corn flakes for breakfast. It's important not to misunderstand this question. The question is not whether you could acquire the information needed to believe justifiably that you had corn flakes for breakfast. If you're not sure, perhaps you could call somebody with whom you had breakfast and acquire relevant information this way. Perhaps you could find out some other way. But that's not what you are interested in when you ask yourself that question. Rather, what you're interested in is this: Am I now, given the knowledge and justified background beliefi [ have in this situation, justified in belieVing that I had corn flakes for breakfast? To answer this question, you may make use of everything you can know and justifiably believe at the time denoted by "now." You might make use of what you now remember about today's morning, of the visual images you can recall from when you were having breakfast, and of bits of conversation you may have had during breakfast. If you thus appeal to your memories, the knowledge you obtain through reflection will be, at least in part, introspective. But reflection is likely to involve an a priori element as well. You might consider what logical and epistemic connections obtain between what you can now remember about this morning and the belief in question, and appeal to general principles about these connections. And if we assume that epistemic principles, if known, are known a priori, it follows that reflection involves an a priori element whenever an appeal to epistemic principles is involved. Reflection, then, is a process that is typically both introspective and a priori: introspective because access to J-factors such as memorial and perceptual states is introspective and a priori because, as internalists assume, epistemic principles are knowable only a priori. The question ''Am I now justified in believing that p?" is relative, then, to a certain body of information, the content of which is fixed by the temporal indexical "now." Once the relevant body of information changes, the reference of "now" changes, and the question becomes a different one. It follows from this that the question can indeed be answered only through reflection. Suppose you do call somebody up who had breakfast with you and ask

For passages in which Chisholm expresses his internalist point of view, see Roderick Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge, 2d edn (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1977), p. 17; and Theory of Knowledge, 3d edn (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1989), pp. 62, 76.

62

DUTIES AND VIRTUES

that person what you were having this morning when you had breakfast together. Obviously, whether you are justified in believing "I had corn flakes for breakfast" after that phone call is a different question than the question of whether you were justified in believing this before the phone call. Thus, if you ask the question before the phone call, and then try to answer it by making the phone call, you are really confusing two different questions: 1. Am I now justified in believing I had corn flakes for breakfast? 2. Did I have corn flakes for breakfast?

[li}-7

Though these two questions are quite similar, they differ in one important respect: You can answer (2), but not (1), by acquiring further relevant information. You can answer (2) by asking somebody else and receiving information you did not have before you asked. But you cannot answer (1) by receiving information you do not have at the time you're asking the question. Rather, (1) can only be answered on the basis of what you can know and justifiably believe at the time denoted by "now." According to the kind of internalism I shall defend, then, the things that render beliefs justified or unjustified must be recognizable on reflection. They must be such that you do not need to gather further information, let alone launch an empirical research program, to become aware of them. According to this view, wishfUL thinking is among the things that qualify as J-factors. When a belief of yours is rendered unjustified because it's grounded in wishful thinking, you can tell this because there are two things you can recognize on reflection: (1) My belief is grounded in wishful thinking; (2) beliefs grounded in wishful thinking are unjustified. A second example: Perceptual experiences are among the things that qualify as J-factors. When a belief of yours is justified by an undefeated perceptual experience, you can tell that it is justified because there are, once again, two things you can recognize on reflection: (1) My belief is supported by an undefeated perceptual experience; (2) beliefs that are supported in this way are justified. A third example: According to internalism, the reliability of cognitive processes does not qualify as a J-factor. Whether your beliefs are produced by reliable cognitive processes is not always recognizable on reflection, for you might need further information to determine whether they are thus produced. So internalism, as I understand it, is a view about the nature of justification: J-factors must be recognizable on reflection. When evaluating a belief's epistemic credentials at a certain time, what makes this belief either justified or unjustified must be recognizable at that time, that is, must be recognizable without having to rely on any information not available at that time. If J-factors are thus constrained, epistemic justification becomes transparent: Its presence or absence can nearly always be determined. Consequently, in

DUTIES AND VIRTUES

63

advocating internalism, I take it that the following is true: For any proposition p, a rational person can nearly always recognize, on reflection, whether she is, or would be, justified in believing that p. *

Internalism and Deontology My reason for placing a direct recognizability constraint on J-factors is that I take the concept of epistemic justification to be a deontological one. I believe that epistemic justification is analogous to moral justification in the following sense: Both kinds of justification belong to the family of de ontological concepts, concepts such as permission, prohibition, obligation, blame, and responsibility. An act that is morally justified is an act that is morally permissible, an act for which one cannot be justly blamed, or an act the agent was not obliged to refrain from performing. I conceive of epistemic justification in an analogous way. A belief that is epistemically justified is a belief that is epistemically permissible, a belief for which the subject cannot justly be blamed, or a belief the subject is not obliged to drop.2 If one takes the concept of epistemic justification to be a de ontological one and thus takes epistemic justification to be a matter of individual responsibility, the internalist constraint that J-factors must be recognizable on reflection is pretty much an unavoidable consequence. In ethics, it is particularly clear, and, as Linda Zagzebski has pointed out, nearly unquestioned, that responsibility and duty fulfillment demand direct recognizability.3 Thus, among ethical theories we do not find a straightforward analog to externalism in epistemology. No one defends the view that what makes an action morally justified or unjustified is something the agent cannot directly recognize.* Rather, what makes actions justified or unjustified must be, at least ordinarily, directly recognizable. Likewise, if epistemic justification is analogous to the justification of actions in being de ontological, then what makes beliefs epistemically justified or unjustified must be, at least ordinarily, directly recognizable. Even though there is then an undeniably close link between justification, duty fulfillment, and the recognizability of justification, I do not think the link is tight enough to warrant, in any obvious way, the conclusion that justification, moral or epistemic, is always directly recognizable. There are at least three types of cases in which, one could plausibly argue, justification, or For statements of the de ontological view of epistemic justification, see Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge, 2nd edn, p. 14; Carl Ginet, Knowledge, Perception, and Memory (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1975) p. 28, and Laurence Bonjour, The Structure of Empirical Knowledge (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 8. 3 See Linda Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 41ff.

64

DUTIES AND VIRTUES

the lack of it, cannot be recognized on reflection. First, there are cases of culpable ignorance. If there are certain things I ought to know but have either forgotten or never bothered to learn, then, so it might be argued, it is possible that, as a result of my ignorance, I do or believe certain things I am not justified in doing or believing - although, given my ignorance, this is not something I can recognize at the time in question. Second, it might be argued that, in both ethics and epistemology, there are certain cases of conflicting reasons where it is extremely hard to find out what one would be justified in doing or believing, cases in which one might not be able to recognize at all what one would be justified in doing or believing. Third, one could argue that there are agents whose character, through moral and epistemic neglect, is so deformed that they simply cannot see their moral or epistemic failings. * Now, I'm not sure that any of these cases provides us with a compelling reason to deny that justification, moral or epistemic, can always be recognized. Nevertheless, I shall grant the point in question and define internalism as the view that J-factors are nearly always recognizable, where the difference between "nearly always" and an unqualified "always" is determined by the extent to which the three cases in question actually occur. Internalism, even if qualified in this way, still differs significantly from externalism with regard to the extent to which epistemic justification is directly recognizable. For if the reliability of cognitive processes is included among the things that are J-factors (or is perhaps even viewed as the only J-factor), then situations in which justification is not directly recognizable are much more widespread than under the kind of internalism I am defending here.

Internalism and the Analysis of Knowledge

[£}--7

To appreciate the strength of the internalist position, it is essential to understand how internalists approach - indeed, must approach - the analysis of knowledge. Now, the analysis of knowledge can be carried out in two different ways: Some philosophers analyze knowledge by incorporating a condition specifically designed to handle the Gettier problem; some do not. Few epistemologists would object to the following two necessary conditions: What is known must be (1) true and (2) something that is believed. Beyond that, however, there is a lot of disagreement. I believe that, in addition to the truth and belief conditions, two more conditions are required: What is known must be a true belief that is (3) justified and (4) lacks the features that are definitive of Gettier-type situations. I shall use the term "degettierized" to refer to this fourth condition of knowledge. Those epistemologists who dispense with the degettierization condition would say that, in addition to (1) and (2), only one further condition is

DUTIES AND VIRTUES

65

needed. This condition will have to specify what "epistemizes" true belief, that is, what carries a true belief all the way toward knowledge. It will have to accomplish both of the things the justification condition and the degettierization condition are supposed to accomplish. Alvin Plantinga is one of 4 those who favor the latter of these approaches. He defines warrant as that which epistemizes true belief, and he thus views internalism as the view that warrant is essentially a matter of justification - typically, de ontologie ally conceived. His own view is that epistemization is an external affair. Conse· quently, warrant - the property that epistemizes true belief - has nothing to do with justification. Now, I do not take justification to be that which epistemizes true belief, and I don't think other internalists do. Rather, I take justification in conjunction with degettierization to be what epistemizes true belief because, unlike Plantinga, I think that the analysis of knowledge must include a degettierization condition. I would, therefore, agree with Plantinga that epistemization the process that turns true belief into knowledge - is an external affair. And I think most other internalists would, too. After all, internalism about justification is to be distinguished from internalism about knowledge. For two reasons, the latter kind of internalism must be rejected. First, taking the concept of justification to be deontological justifies placing a direct recognizability constraint on justification. It does not justify placing this constraint on knowledge. Second, internalism about knowledge is untenable because two necessary conditions of knowledge are clearly external: truth and degettierization. It is obviously false that, with regard to any proposition p, 5 I can nearly always find out on reflection whether p is true or not. And whether a belief is degettierized or not (whether I am in a Gettier-type situation or not) is not recognizable on reflection either. To see why the fourth condition of knowledge is external, consider a Gettier case. Suppose I look out my office window and see a squirrel climbing up a tree. This is nothing extraordinary, and I spontaneously believe "There's a squirrel out there." My belief is justified, for it is based on undefeated perceptual evidence. Alas, what I take to be a squirrel is a hologram projected by a crazy professor from the Electrical Engineering Department. This hologram is so perfect that, without close examination, it would be impossible to tell that it's not a real squirrel but just a clever

See Alvin Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). This is so for two reasons. First, justification is fallible. Sometimes, I have perfectly good reasons to consider true what is in fact false. Under such circumstances, I cannot recognize on reflection that what I believe is not true but false. Second, there are numerous times when I just don't have enough evidence, or no evidence at all, to tell whether the proposition I'm considering is true. In such cases, I need more information, which is to say that I can't tell on reflection whether the proposition in question is true.

66

DUTIES AND VIRTUES

squirrel-like image. Suppose further there's actually a squirrel out there, but it is sitting quietly behind a large branch, and I can't see it from my current vantage point. My belief, then, is not only justified but also true, for there really is a squirrel out there. Yet it isn't knowledge. Now, can I tell on reflection that my present situation involves a factor that stands in the way of knowledge? Obviously not. If I were to reflect on whether or not I know there's a squirrel out there, I would have no reason at all to conclude that I do not know. * This point will apply to all Gettier cases, irrespective of their specific features. For by definition, Gettier cases are cases in which there is an element hidden from me: My belief is true just because of some lucky accident. Suppose this element was not hidden from me. Suppose it was either known to me or recognizable on reflection. Well, this couldn't be reconciled with an essential feature of Gettier cases: What I believe must be justified. But if the justification condition is met, then that element whatever it is - by virtue of which my belief is merely accidentally true must not be directly recognizable to me at the time in question. So if one is in a Gettier case, one can't tell on reflection that this is so. And since being in a Gettier case is something that can happen, it follows that whether the fourth condition - the degettierization condition - is met or not is not always directly recognizable. * I take it, then, that knowledge involves two internal and two external conditions. The two internal conditions are belief and justification. 6 The two external conditions are truth and degettierization. Externalists take knowledge to be less internal than that. Extreme externalists might say that none of the necessary conditions of knowledge is internal. Moderate externalists might acknowledge the internal nature of belief but deny that epistemic justification is de ontological and thus internal. Now, as I pointed out above, to justify this denial, Plantinga's point - turning true belief into knowledge is an external matter - will not suffice, for internalists do not contest this point. Rather, when externalists attempt to demonstrate that justification is not internal, they must try to show that turning a true and degettierized belief into knowledge is an external matter. And to show this, they would have to establish that de ontological justification is not a necessary condition of knowledge. But if we take into account what, according to the kind of internalism I advocate, de ontological justification amounts to, we will see that it is not easy to establish this. With regard to the content of our epistemic duties, internalists can take a variety of different positions. Since I cannot go into a discussion of their I'm inclined to say that we can nearly always tell, for a given proposition p, whether we believe p or not. Thus, I take belief to be an internalist concept. For doubts about the direct recognizability of belief, see Jaegwon Kim, Philosophy of Mind (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996),

p. 18.

DUTIES AND VIRTUES

[I}-7

67

respective merits, I shall merely indicate what I take to be the most plausible view. Our epistemic duty is to believe in accord with our evidence: believe p only if p is supported by our evidence, disbelieve p only if p is contradicted by our evidence, and suspend judgment about p if our evidence neither supports nor contradicts p. Now, does a person's evidence meet the internalist constraint thatJ-factors be recognizable on reflection? This depends on what we count as evidence. In my view, what qualifies as evidence is the following: perceptual, introspective, memorial states and states of rationally comprehending abstract matters, such as conceptual, arithmetical, or geometric connections, and of course beliefs. Items such as these qualify as J-factors, for whether or not they obtain is directly recognizable. If we view internalism in this way, then the assertion that deontological justification is not a necessary condition of knowledge amounts to the following claim: It's possible to know something without directly recognizable supporting evidence. On the face of it, this seems to be an implausible view. Nevertheless, there is space for discussion here. After all, little children, cats, and dogs can plausibly be said to have knowledge of their environment. And if we study the behavior of rats, earthworms, and amoebas, it would appear that knowledge can be attributed even to rather primitive organisms. But surely, when we talk about rats, earthworms, and amoebas, the idea that such creatures can have directly recognizable evidence is rather far-fetched. And thus it would appear that knowledge without justification - that is, without the kind of justification that depends on having evidence - is possible after all. * My reply to this objection is that, in my philosophical concern with knowledge, what I am interested in is not the kind of knowledge exemplified by higher and lower animals, but rather the kind of knowledge humans are capable of having. And that kind of knowledge is, I take it, qualitatively different from the kind of knowledge attainable by rats, earthworms, and amoebas. It is what Ernest Sosa calls "reflective" knowledge: the kind of knowledge that can itself become the object of knowledge. Humans can evaluate their evidence, assess whether or not what they believe is justified, and thus come to recognize when they know and when they do not. Little children and animals can't do that. Their response to their environment is, as Sosa would put it, "thermometer-like."? They can register features of their environment, but they do not have any capacity for discriminating between justified and unjustified beliefs and cases of knowledge and of ignorance. Reflective knowledge, then, is beyond their ken, for they can't attain knowledge of their epistemic states. But it is that kind of knowledge - knowledge

See Ernest Sosa, Knowledge in Perspective: Selected Essays in Epistemology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), particularly "Reliabilism and Intellectual Virtue," pp.

7

l31-145.

68

DUTIES AND VIRTUES

that can be recognized as knowledge - that, according to internalism, requires the kind of justification that involves both epistemic duty fulfillment and having evidence.* The kind of internalism I am defending, then, can be summarized thus. Epistemic justification is the kind of justification that, when it comes in a sufficiently high degree, turns a true and degettierized belief into reflective knowledge. It is deontological and evidentialist in nature and nearly always directly recognizable. In the remainder of this paper, I shall address three objections to this account: (1) It is false that epistemic justification is nearly always directly recognizable; (2) epistemic justification is not de ontological because belief is not under our voluntary control; and (3) epistemic justification is not de ontological because it is not truth-conducive.

Evidentialism, Deontology, and Direct Recognizability Let us compare internalism, as I conceive of it, with one version of externalism: reliabilism. First, reliabilism is not a de ontological view. According to it, whether one's beliefs are justified does not depend on epistemic duty fulftllment but on whether one's beliefs are produced by reliable cognitive processes. Second, reliabilism is opposed to internalism with regard to the recognizability of epistemic justification: J-factors need not be directly recognizable. Third, reliabilism is not evidentialist: If reliable belief production is both necessary and sufficient for justified belief, then having evidence is neither necessary nor sufficient for epistemic justification. Reliabilists, then, reject my view that we can nearly always tell whether what we believe is justified or not. It seems to me, however, at bottom, our disagreement about the recognizability of justification is really indicative of another, more fundamental disagreement. I don't wish to dispute that, if we think about epistemic justification the way re1iabilists do, there are plenty of cases in which it's not directly recognizable whether what one believes is justified or not. And that's because reliabilists reject deontology and evidentialism, which I endorse. Likewise, reliabilists should agree that, ifwe think about epistemic justification as being de ontological and evidentialist, then there are much fewer cases in which it's not directly recognizable whether what one believes is justified or not. The recognizability of epistemic justification is a function of what makes beliefs justified or unjustified, and since internalists and externalists disagree about that, they of course disagree about the extent to which epistemic justification is directly recognizable. Externalists might argue, however, that even granting deontology and evidentialism, internalists are too optimistic about direct recognizability. In other words, internalism suffers from incoherence: the internalist constraint thatJ-factors must nearly always be directly recognizable is inconsistent with

4¥

DUTIES AND VIRTUES

,$

69

deontology and evidentialism, since the latter two features allow in fact for massive failure of direct recognizability. To substantiate this challenge, externalists would have to argue that at least one of the following two types of cases frequently occurs: (1) cases in which one has evidence for p without being able to recognize that one has evidence for p; (2) cases in which one has evidence against p without being able to recognize that one has evidence against p. Above, I indicated that internalists might be willing to concede the existence of certain cases in which justification is not directly recognizable. Externalists could try to show that there are even more such cases than one might think initially, thus bit by bit expanding the extent to which epistemic justification is not directly recognizable. I don't think it likely this project will meet with success. Any such case must be, as I explained above, a case premised on deontology and evidentialism, or else the disagreement about it will merely be a reflection of an underlying, deeper disagreement about the nature of epistemic justification. But as long as externalist critics work within the constraints of deontology and evidentialism, I don't think it will be easy for them to succeed in producing cases in which a belief's justificational status is not directly recognizable. It won't be easy for them because direct recognizability is built into the concept of having evidence. Evidence that's not directly recognizable simply is not evidence a person has. It is not a person's epistemic duty to believe in accord with such evidence (evidence there is but which one does not have), and thus such evidence is irrelevant with regard to a belief's justificational status. In short, if we understand evidentialism to be the view that a belief is justified if and only if the subject meets her epistemic duty by having (undefeated) evidence for that belief and if we agree that evidence not directly recognizable is not evidence one has, then it will be difficult indeed to describe possible cases that are consistent with deontology and evidentialism but are cases in which epistemic justification or the lack of it is not directly recognizable.

Deontological Justification and Doxastic Involuntarism According to William Alston, having justified beliefs cannot be a matter of epistemic duty fulfillment because beliefs are not under our voluntary control. His argument can be summed up thus: 1. If a belief is deontologically justified or unjustified, it is under the

subject's voluntary control. 2. Beliefs are never under our voluntary control. 3. Therefore, beliefs are never deontologically justified or unjustified.

;

70

[h}-7

DUTIES AND VIRTUES

Let's begin with a preliminary point. I grant that beliefs are never under our direct voluntary control. Doing x is under my direct voluntary control when a mere act of will suffices to do x. For example, raising my arm is under my direct voluntary control; turning on the light is not. It is, however, indirectly under my voluntary control. I can get up and flip the switch, which I can bring about through a series of bodily motions each of which is under my direct voluntary control. Now, if the argument were concerned merely with direct voluntary control; it would have to be rejected immediately. Obviously, for an action to be deontologically justified or unjustified, it need not be under our direct voluntary control. Why, then, should we place a much stricter condition on de ontological justification with regard to belief? What is at issue, rather, is indirect voluntary control. But is it true that belief is never under our indirect voluntary control? More than just a few 8 epistemologists think it is. I must confess that I find this quite baffling, for I think there is no question at all that we do enjoy a great deal of indirect control over what we believe. Consider unjustified beliefs. To say that we don't have even indirect control over unjustified beliefs is to say that, at those times when we have an unjustified belief, there is nothing we can do to get rid of it. This, I think, is clearly false. We can assess the epistemic credentials of what we believe; we can weigh the evidence. Since this is something we can do, it is within our power, at least a good deal of the time, to recognize that what we believe is unjustified and, on the basis of such reflection, to quit believing what we unjustifiably believe. Unfortunately, Alston's argument is not effectively rebutted by pointing this out. Opponents of deontology might as well grant that unjustified beliefs are frequently under our indirect voluntary control, for it seems fairly clear, at least initially, that most of our justified beliefs are not under our indirect voluntary control. Consider, for example, perceptual beliefs about our environment. If you see that it's raining and thus believe that it's raining, you're simply stuck with that belief. The same point can be made about the entire array of beliefs that are grounded in excellent sensory, memorial, introspective, or intuitional evidence. Such beliefs can quite plaUSibly be thought of as involuntary. And if they are indeed involuntary, it would then seem to follow that at best only some of our beliefs are deontologically justified or unjustified. But that's a disastrous consequence. It would mean that the type of theory I'm defending here is of very limited applicability and thus relevance. It seems to me there are two effective ways to rebut Alston's argument. To begin with, Richard Feldman challenges the first premise. Granting that

See, for example, Alston, Epistemic Justification. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989) essays 4 and 5;Jonathan Bennett, "Why Is BeliefInvoluntary?" Analysis 50 (1990), pp. 87-107; and Richard Feldman, "Epistemic Obligation," in Philosophical Perspectives 2, ed. James Tomberlin (Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview, 1988).

DUTIES AND VIRTUES

71

moral obligations require voluntary control, he points out that not all types of obligation are like moral obligations in this respect. For example, one can have a legal obligation to repay a debt even when one is unable to do this. Why, then, should we think that epistemic obligation is analogous to moral obligation? Given that there are many different types of obligation, and that not all of these require voluntary control, wouldn't it be more plausible to assume that, with regard to voluntary control, there is an important disanalogy between moral and epistemic obligation?9 I agree with Feldman that the first premise ought to be challenged, but, unlike Feldman, I am inclined to argue that not even moral obligation demands voluntary control - at least if by voluntary control we mean what Alston means by that concept. According to Alston, I have voluntary control over doing x at t if and only if, at t, I can do x and refrain from doing X.IO If this is what we mean by voluntary control, then I think it is not at all clear that we can have a moral obligation to do x only if we have voluntary control over doing x. Consider an example: Picture yourself at your favorite restaurant having dinner. At the table next to you, there is somebody who bothers you by talking and laughing in an overly loud manner. Now, let's grant that you are morally obliged to refrain from sticking your knife into that person's hand. According to the thesis in question, for you to be under this obligation, it must be the case that you can stick a knife in his hand. But can you? I do not mean to deny that, under certain circumstances, you can. But can you in the situation I am asking you to consider? And in the situation I'm asking you to consider, although you clearly are bothered by the man, you do not harbor violent emotions toward him. You don't feel even the slightest impulse to get up, take your knife, and drive it into the man's hand. Let's say, then, that you have absolutely no reason for sticking a knife in the unpleasant guest's hand and indeed plenty of decisive moral and prudential reasons against it. Could you, notwithstanding these reasons, get up and do so anyhow? I do not think there is a coherent account of what would be going on if, under exactly the circumstances we are imagining, you got up and stuck a knife in the man's hand. Whatever that sort of behavior would be, it would not be an action of yours. And if it was an action, it would not take place exactly under the circumstances we are imagining. II The significance of the knife example is this: You are morally obliged to refrain from sticking a knife in the man's hand although this is something you couldn't do anyhow in the situation in question. Examples like this one, See Feldman, "Epistemic Obligation." See Alston, Epistemic Justification. p. 123. 11 For a position on this matter similar to the one I am suggesting here, see Peter Van 1nwagen, "When is the Will Free?" in T. O'Connor, ed. Agents, Causes, and Events (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). 10

72

DUTIES AND VIRTUES

as well as others, show that it's a mistake to assume that deontological status - an action or a belief's being permissible, forbidden, or obligatory depends on voluntary control over it, where voluntary control over doing x at t requires of the subject that she can, at t, do x and refrain from doing x. * Yet I do not wish to dismiss the intuition that deontological status and voluntary control are conceptually linked. Let us therefore explore whether we can conceive of voluntary control in some other way. It seems to me that, when we use the concept of voluntary control in its ordinary sense, sticking a knife in a person's hand is just the sort of thing over which we do take ourselves to have voluntary control. So what we really mean by "voluntary control" is perhaps not the ability to act in a certain way and refrain from acting in that way at one and the same time, but rather the ability to act in a certain way, or to refrain from acting in that way, depending on which way of acting is supported by our reasons. On this view, voluntary action is action that is responsive to our reasons.* To make sense of this, consider again the situation in the restaurant. According to our ordinary view of things, it's unproblematic to say you are obliged to refrain from sticking a knife in the man's hand because we assume that it's under your voluntary control to do that sort of thing or not. And by that latter claim, we mean that you can stick a knife in the man's hand in response to a reason to do so and that you can refrain from sticking a knife in the man's hand in response to a reason to refrain from doing so. On this account, sticking a knife in somebody's hand is an action that's under my voluntary control if I can perform it, or refrain from performing it, in response to reasons for or against performing it. I am sympathetic toward this concept of voluntary control. * However, if this is what we mean by that concept, the second premise of the argument displayed above must be rejected. If voluntariness does indeed consist in responsiveness to reasons, then it would be rather odd to maintain that, while what we do is under our voluntary control, what we believe is not. Consider again what we mean when we identify voluntariness with responsiveness to reasons and take sticking a knife in somebody's hand to be under our voluntary control. What we mean is this: Should I have a suitable reason, it is the sort of thing I can do. Now, this might be otherwise. Perhaps my fear of blood or my inhibition to harm somebody is so great that I couldn't stick a knife in somebody's hand even if I had an extremely good reason to do so. In that case, sticking a knife in a person's hand is not the sort of thing over which I have voluntary control. But if I am not that kind of a person, if I can indeed respond to suitable reasons for sticking a knife in somebody's hand by going ahead and doing it, then it is something that is under my voluntary control. Now consider a belief that is as good a candidate for the status of being involuntary as any: my belief that it's raining when I see that it's raining. When we consider this belief, it certainly looks as though we do not have

DUTIES AND VIRTUES

73

voluntary control over it. It did not come about as the result of a decision, not could I effectively decide to drop this belief. The impression of involuntariness, however, arises only if we apply a different yardstick: if, now that we are considering belief instead of action, we switch from our current concept of voluntary control back to our previous one. Let us refer to voluntary control as defined by Alston as narrow and to the modified concept I subsequently introduced as broad. In the situation we are considering I see and thus believe that it's raining - I do not enjoy narrow voluntary control over the belief that it's raining. But we agreed already that making deontological status dependent on narrow voluntary control is too restrictive, at least as far as action is concerned. Now, I do not think there is any justification for treating deontological status differently for actions and beliefs, to require merely broad voluntary control for de ontological status of actions but narrow voluntary control for deontological status of belief. Let us therefore reconsider the voluntariness of my belief "It's raining," making sure that the concept of voluntary control we are working with is not narrow but broad. The question, then, is the following: Can I, in response to suitable reasons, refrain from believing that it's raining when I take myself to see that it's raining? I don't see any reason to assume that I couldn't. For example, if! see that it's raining but then come to learn from a reliable source that under the present circumstances I am very likely to hallucinate that it's raining, I might drop this belief. My belief that it's raining, then, is a belief! can retain or drop in response to reasons for or against retaining it. Hence, it is a belief over which I have - in an indirect way - voluntary control. Of course, it could be otherwise. My ability to drop this belief in response to suitable reasons might be impeded by a funny drug, hypnosis, a brain lesion, and other bizarre phenomena. If this were the case, my belief that it's raining would be involuntary. Absent such bizarre phenomena, however, I am perfectly capable of responding to a suitable reason by dropping this belief. Thus, according to our revised cObcept of voluntariness, whether or not to believe it's raining is something that is indirectly under my voluntary control. Note that tre~tifl&th.e-voluntariness of belief in this way is analogous to the way we treated the voluntariness of actions above. As long as you do not have any good reason for sticking a knife in somebody's hand, you can't do it. But suppose you are supplied with a pretty good reason to do that sort of thing. Well, if in that case you can do it, then you have voluntary control over whether or not to stick a knife in somebody's hand. Likewise, if you can stop believing that it's raining when supplied with a suitable reason, then you have voluntary control over whether or not to believe that it's raining. If we conceive of voluntary belief as belief that is responsive to our reasons, the extent of involuntary belief will be rather small. What can prevent us from adjusting our beliefs to our reasons are things like the following: brain lesions, phobias, neurotic compulsions and inhibitions,

74

DUTIES AND VIRTUES

various forms of paranoia, the effects of drugs, and other similar things. Things like that, when present and causally active in the right way, render beliefs as well as actions involuntary. But under normal circumstances, we act and form beliefs in response to the reasons we have and modify our behavior and change our beliefs when our reasons change. Under normal circumstances then, our beliefs are just as voluntary as our actions. 12 The upshot of my discussion is that advocates of the involuntarism argument face a dilemma. They must base their argument either on Alston's narrow concept of voluntary control or on the broad conception I outlined above, or something similar to it. Depending on which alternative they prefer, either the argument's first or second premise must be considered dubious. I do not think, therefore, that the argument from doxastic involuntarism amounts to an obstacle to deontological accounts of epistemic justification.

Deontological Justification and Truth-Conduciveness According to Alston, there is a second reason why epistemic justification is not de ontological. Deontological justification is not truth-conducive. It does nothing toward turning true beliefs into knowledge and thus does not amount to epistemic justification.* This point, Alston argues, can be established by considering a case of cultural isolation. Here's an account of the kind of case Alston has in mind. Imagine a tribe whose members engage in doxastic habits that are not conducive to the acquisition of knowledge. Beliefs formed as the result of these habits have no tendency to be true. To the extent they are true, this is just a matter of luck Consequently, the beliefs under consideration are not epistemically justified. They could never amount to knowledge. According to Alston, however, they are deontologically justified, for the tribe members cannot be blamed for they way they form their beliefs. This is so because in this tribe traditional intellectual practices are never critically questioned. Nor has the tribe, through contact with other cultures, ever been externally exposed to criticism of its intellectual procedures. Given these circumstances, the tribe members, according to Alston, are blame free. How does Alston's cultural isolation objection raise a problem for internalism? Obviously, even if Alston were right about the type of case he has in mind, his objection would not establish that de ontological justification is not necessary for knowledge. Even if it were true that deontologically justified beliefs fall sometimes short of being knowledge, it wouldn't follow that there are cases of knowledge without de ontological justification ....

12 A solution along these lines is set forth in Matthias Steup, An Introduction to Epistemology (Upper Saddle River, N): Prentice Hall, 1996), pp. 77fl".

DUTIES AND VIRTUES

[J}-:?

75

Reliabilists will not accept my position on this matter. According to them, for a belief to be justified it must be based on a reliable ground.* And whether a belief is based on a reliable ground is something that is frequently not recognizable on reflection. Hence, from the reliabilist point of view, it can easily happen that a belief is deontologically but not epistemically justified. I think, however, that it is not only unnecessary but indeed counterintuitive to place a reliability constraint on justification. It seems to me that this constraint is motivated by the expectation that epistemic justification - when things go right - turns beliefS into knowledge. And since a belief based on an unreliable ground cannot amount to knowledge, justification must involve reliability. This line of reasoning, however, is not compelling. Its intuitive appeal arises from the conceptual link between knowledge and reliability. I accept this link. Without reliability there can't be knowledge. But from this link, it doesn't follow that reliability has to enter into the analysis of knowledge via the justification condition. After all, there is an alternative. Reliability could and I think should - enter the analysis of knowledge through the fourth condition, whose job is to degettierize justified true belief.* It is therefore possible to retain reliability within the analysis of knowledge without imposing it as a necessary condition on justification.

Conclusion In this paper, I have tried to defend an approach to epistemology that is deontological, evidentialist, and internalist. This approach, it seems to me, successfully withstands the objections externalists have raised against it. Moreover, as I have indicated in the previous paragraph, it can be defended against externalist objections without dismissing the intuitive appeal behind these objections. The intuitive appeal of externalism lies in the fact that knowledge is to a large extent external. One way of doing justice to its externality is to make epistemic justification an external affair. This, I think, is preserving one important intuition by sacrificing another: the intuition that justification is, by its very nature, an internal matter.* It would be better to preserve both of these intuitions. And both of them are preserved when we combine an internalist justification condition with an externalist degettierization condition.* This is, in my opinion, the right approach to analyzing knowledge.*

Commentary on Steup Internalism makes the possession of justification and knowledge a transparent affair. Steup begins by spelling out what the transparency of justification amounts to. Of what kind is the cognitive access that a justified believer is said to have of his

76

DUTIES AND VIRTUES

justificatory factors (or J-factors)? Steup explicates this cognitive access in terms of the route by which one has access: whether one is justified in believing p is wholly determined by factors which one is in a position to know by reflection alone. This, of course, raises the question of what is involved in such 'reflection'. By 'reflection' Steup means a priori reasoning, introspective awareness of one's own mental states and experiences, and one's memory of knowledge acquired in those ways. In the paragraph marked ~ Steup gives two examples of J-factors which are recognizable on reflection (or 'directly recognizable'): perceptual experiences and wishful thinking. When a belief of yours is based on wishful thinking, it is unjustified and you are in a position to tell that it is unjustified. Analogously, when a belief of yours is based on perceptual experiences, it is justified and you are in a position to tell that it is justified. Factors which are not recognizable on reflection, such as the reliability of the cognitive process causing one's beliefs, are unable to bestow on a belief the quality of being justified. Do you agree with the claim that perceptual experiences are ,,,..,ncr,,,.,, subject in the sense that he can discriminate them from other mental as hallucinations and memory experiences?

their

such

Some types of mental states obviously fail of transparency in this sense: knowledge is not transparent, for example, because the subject cannot discriminate knowledge from mere belief just on the basis of introspection, On the other hand, bodily sensations are plausibly regarded as transparent: I can, by introspection, tell the difference between pain and pleasure. Now which category do perceptual experiences belong to? There are actually two issues here. First, are perceptual contents subjectively transparent? Are differences of perceptual seeming seeming differences? Second, are perceptual experiences qua perceptual experiences transparent to the mind? Intuitively the answer to the latter question is 'no'. (By and large, propositional attitudes that are factive [i.e., imply truth] are subjectively opaque and non-factive propositional attitudes are subjectively transparent. 'To know', 'to see', and 'to remember' are paradigm examples of factive verbs and 'to believe' is a paradigm example of a non-factive verb. A convenient grammatical mark of the factivity of propositional verbs is the possibility of co-occurrences with wh-clauses, i.e., clauses beginning with 'who', 'whom', 'what', 'where', 'when', and 'why'.l Both factive and non-factive propositional verbs can take that-clause complements [e.g., 'I remember that the book was stolen', 'I believe that the book was stolen'], but only the factive verbs can accept theirwh-transformations: we can say 'I remember who stole the book', 'I remember why he did it', 'I remember how did it', and 'I remember what he did with it'. But we cannot say 'I believe who stole the book', 'I believe why he did it', 'I believe how he did it', and 'I believe what he did with it'.) See Z. Vendler, Res Cogitans: An Essay in Rational Psychology (Cornell University Press, 1972), ch. 5 and 'Telling the Facts', in J. R. Searle, F. Kiefer, and M. Bierwich (eds.), Speech Act Theory and Pragmatics (Reidel, 1980), pp. 273-90.

DUTIES AND VIRTUES

77

In the second section, Steup connects the intemalist conception of justification with a de ontological one. Deontology serves as the motivation of intemalism. Just as moral responsibility requires that the agent be able to tell whether and when he is follOwing or violating moral rules, epistemic responsibility usually demands that the subject be able to recognize by reflection whether or not he is conforming to epistemic rules.

In the paragraph marked @-7 Steup explains that, provided my epistemic end is to believe what is true and not believe what is false, my epistemic duty is to believe what is supported by my evidence and to avoid believing what is not supported by my evidence. This account of epistemic duty raises at least two issues. First, to answer the question 'What should I do in order to believe truly' by saying 'Believe in accord with your evidence' doesn't seem to do more than to offer a truism. The problem is that the duty to believe in accord with the evidence is too general to be of concrete help. What seems to be needed is a catalogue specifying which belief is supported by which piece of evidence. But Steup is prudent not to even try to develop such a catalogue, for there are no wholly general principles dictating what a piece of evidence supports. Whether a belief is supported by a piece of evidence crucially depends on the context. Steup emphasizes the context-dependency of the evidence ~ belief relation in the ~assage marked Rather than simply asking whether I am justified in. ?elievin~hat I had cornflakes for breakfast, Steup asks whether, given the knowledge and justified background beliefs I have in this particular situation, I am justified in believing that I had cornflakes for breakfast. Second, to be told that we have an epistemic duty to believe as the evidence directs us doesn't tell us very much unless we know what qualifies as evidence. In the paragraph marked@-7 Steup defines evidence as consisting of both beliefs and experiential states such as sensory, introspective, memorial, and intuitional states. Given this definition, a person's evidence is directly recognizable to that person. Steup's evidentialism and his internalism are two sides of the same coin: because evidence is directly recognizable it is the kind of thing that makes beliefs justified or unjustified. Let's summarize: Steup's conception of justification is internalist, de ontological, and evidentialist. It is internalist because justification is said to be 'nearly always' directly recognizable. It is de ontological because it takes justification to be a matter of epistemic duty fulfilment, and it is evidentialist because the content of our epistemic duties is to believe in accord with the evidence. A notorious problem for any intemalist account of justification is that it is unable to eliminate the possibility that one's belief is only accidentally true and therefore doesn't count as knowledge. An internalist conception of justification is always consistent with cases where the satisfaction of the justification condition is not related to the satisfaction of the truth condition. And because these are the very cases that Gettier-type counterexamples exploit, any internalist conception of justification is subject to the Gettier problem. The reason is that an intemalist condition, no matter how it is spelled out, doesn't seem to entail the truth of the proposition believed.

0-7.

78

DUTIES AND VIRTUES

Since Steup is aware of this shortcoming of internalism, he maintains, in paragraph @}--7 and following, that in addition to the truth condition and the internalist justification condition, knowledge demands an externalist 'degettierization condition'. The degettierization condition ensures that the satisfaction of the justification condition entails the truth of what is believed. One possible candidate for such a degettierization condition, mentioned in [IJ-7, is indicator reliabilism: the belief that p is justified if it is based on a reliable ground, where a reliable ground for p is defined as some condition or fact that would not be the case unless p were true. <Why can Steup still call himself an internalist given that he proposes to ment the internalist justification condition with an externalist dege1ttif~ri2:ati' condition? Internalism about justification is defined as the view that all the factors required for a belief to be justified must be recognizable on reflection. Because the externalist degettierization condition doesn't contribute to the justification of a belief, Steup can embrace the degettierization condition and still count as an internalist about justification. The degettierization condition is a necessary component not of justification but of knowledge. Knowledge is external, justification internal. Note that, in Steup distances himself from internalism about knowledge.

w:J-7,

How does Steup defend internalism against the charge that it is implausible tc() deny knowledge to higher animals, small children, unsophisticated adults? Small children and higher animals don't fulfil the conditions for justification. They are not in a position to reflectively recognize their J-factors for the simple reason that they (presumably) don't (yet) possess the concept of justification. But at the same time we often say of children and animals that they know various things. Do we only speak metaphorically when we attribute knowledge to these beings? In the paragraph marked [I}--7 Steup solves the issue by differentiating between different senses of the word 'knowledge'. The kind of knowledge de ontological internalism is about is not animal knowledge but reflective knowledge. While animal knowledge is only a matter of arriving at true and degettierized beliefs, reflective knowledge requires, in addition, that the subject be reflectively aware of the evidence supporting his belief. We will return to the distinction between animal knowledge and reflective knowledge in connection with So sa. Section IV discusses the anti-internalist claim that whether a belief is justified or not is frequently not recognizable on reflection. At least since Sigmund Freud, it has been widely accepted that much of our inner life is hidden from us and that the access we have to our beliefs can be distorted by self-deception. Now, in light of the undeniable fact that we often don't keep track of the evidence for our beliefs and that we are sometimes mistaken about the grounds for why we hold the beliefs we do hold, the cognitive accessibility requirement of internalism seems to be psychologically unrealistic.

DUTIES AND VIRTUES

79

The internalist might try to defend the accessibility assumption by arguing that what matters is whether the evidence is in principle accessible to the believer. 2 As long as the believer can directly recognize the evidence that supports his belief, he is justified in holding the belief. This is not the strategy Steup adopts. Instead that, by definition, evidence is directly Steup maintains in paragraph accessible to the believer. This may be called an analytic solution to the accessibility problem, because it amounts to holding that the statement, 'Epistemic evidence is recognizable on reflection', is analytic: it is true solely by virtue of the ordinary meanings of the words in it. So, in the end, Steup defers the accessibility problem rather than solves it. Section V discusses a criticism of epistemic deontologism. Deontologism has it that, for a subject to justifiably believe p, he should have the goal of believing what is true and he should follow the evidentialist rule, 'Believe in accord with your evidence'. But for the normative talk of rule follOWing to make sense, subjects must have voluntary control over their beliefs. The reason is that 'ought' implies 'can'. To say of someone that he ought to do X, implies that he can do X. Ifhe couldn't do X, it would be incoherent to demand of him that he do X. Thus deontologism seems to claim that, for you to justifiably believe p, it must be within your control to refrain from believing p. This claim is said to be psychologically implausible. Many of your beliefs are out of your control. You can pretend to believe all sorts of things, but you cannot simply take up any belief at will. This idea is called doxastic involuntarism. 'Doxa' is Greek for 'belief'.

lliJ--7

Explain, in your own words, how Steup answers the charge of doxastic tarism.

involtt1i~~/

Steup develops a two-step response. First step: In the paragraph marked [h}-7 he denies that we are epistemically responsible for our beliefs only if our beliefs are under our control. For example, a member of the Flat Earth Society may not be able to help believing that the world is not spherical. But this need not stop us from saying that in relation to the goal of believing truly, it is the person's duty to refrain from believing that the world is not spherical. Second step: In the remainder of section V Steup argues that the involuntarism objection is mistaken because there is a sense in which we do have voluntary control over our justified beliefs. The second step rests on a distinction between a soft and a hard notion of involuntariness. When a justified belief is softly involuntary, then, if one's evidence were to change, one could refrain from holding the belief. The belief is unavoidable only vis-a-vis the evidence one has. Hard involuntariness, however, means that one will hold on to a belief, no matter what, and that one is unable to react to a change in one's evidence. Steup defends deontologism by arguing that most of our beliefs are typically only softly involuntary and that deontologism is compatible with soft involuntariness. Chisholm, for example, takes this route in Theory of Knowledge (2nd edition, Prentice-Hall 1977),

p. 17.

80

DUTIES AND VIRTUES

It is not clear that what Steup calls 'broad voluntary control' is genuine voluntary control. Even if my beliefs change according to the evidence, if I can't affect the evidence, I have no control over my beliefs. Of course, my beliefs could be otherwise, but there is nothing I can do to make them otherwise.

Introduction to Sosa Ernest Sosa is professor of philosophy both at Brown University and at the State University of New Jersey at Rutgers. He works primarily in epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind. In epistemology, Sosa has developed a position called virtue perspectivism, which is a kind of middle ground between Goldman-type process reliabilism and internalism about justification. According to process reliabilism, the justificatory status of a belief depends on the reliability of the belief-formation process, while internalism claims that for a belief to qualifY as justified the believer must have cognitive access to the justifYing factors. Sosa combines both insights by claiming, roughly, that genuine or 'reflective' knowledge is true belief which is reliably produced and which the subject knows is reliably produced. Sosa has written Knowledge in Perspective: Selected Essays in Epistemology (1991) and (together with L. Bonjour) Epistemic Justification: Internalism vs. Externalism, Foundationalism vs. Virtues (2003). Among the numerous collections co-edited by Sosa are A Companion to Epistemology (1992, with J. Dancy), The Blackwell Guide to Epistemology (1999, with J. Greco), Epistemology (2000, with J. Kim), and Contemporary Debates in Epistemology (2004, with M. Steup). Ernest Sosa and His Critics (2004), edited by J. Greco, contains 22 critical essays on Sosa's epistemology and metaphysics, as well as Sosa's replies.

Ernest Sosa, cReliabilism and Intellectual Virtue~ A

Generic Reliabilism

Generic reliabilism might be put simply as follows: S's belief that p at t is justified iff it is the outcome of a process of belief acquisition or retention which is reliable, or leads to a sufficiently high preponderance of true beliefs over false beliefs. That simple statement of the view is subject to three main problems: the generality problem, the new evil-demon problem, and the meta-incoherence problem (to give it a label). Let us consider these in turn.

DUTIES AND VIRTUES

81

The generality problem for such reliabilism is that of how to avoid processes which are too specific or too generic. Thus we must avoid a process with only one output ever, or one artificially selected so that if a belief were the output of such a process it would indeed be true; for every true belief is presumably the outcome of some such too-specific processes, so that if such processes are allowed, then every true belief would result from a reliable process and would be justified. But we must also avoid processes which are too generic, such as perception (period), which surely can produce not only justified beliefs but also unjustified ones, even if perception is on the whole a reliable process of belief acquisition for normally circumstanced humans. 1 The evil-demon problem for reliabilism is not Descartes's problem, of course, but it is a relative. What if twins of ours in another possible world were given mental lives just like ours down to the most minute detail of experience or thought, etc., though they were also totally in error about the nature of their surroundings, and their perceptual and inferential processes of belief acquisition accomplished very little except to sink them more and more deeply and systematically into error? Shall we say that we are justified in our beliefs while our twins are not? They are quite wrong in their beliefs, of course, but it seems somehow very implausible to suppose that they are unjustified. 2 The meta-incoherence problem is in a sense a mirror image of the new evildemon problem, for it postulates not a situation where one is internally justified though externally unreliable, but a situation where one is internally unjustified though externally reliable. More specifically, it supposes that a belief (that the President is in New York) which derives from one's (reliable) clairvoyance is yet not justified if either (a) one has a lot of ordinary evidence against it, and none in its favor; or (b) one has a lot of evidence against one's possessing such a power of clairvoyance; or (c) one has good reason to believe that such a power could not be possessed (e.g., it might require the transmission of some influence at a speed greater than that of light); or (d) one has no evidence for or against the general possibility of the power, or of one's having it oneself, nor does one even have any evidence either for or against the proposition that one believes as a result of one's power (that the President is in New York).3

This problem is pointed out by Goldman himself ("What is justified Belief?" in George Pappas, ed., Justification and knowledge, Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1979, p. 12), and is developed by Richard Feldman in "Reliability and Justification," The Monist 68 (1985): 159-74. 2 This problem is presented by Keith Lehrer and Stewart Cohen in "Justification, Truth, and Coherence," Synthese 55 (1983): 191-207. 3 This sort of problem is developed by Laurence Bonjour in "Externalist Theories of Empirical Knowledge," in Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. 5: Studies in Epistemology, ed. P. French et al. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980).

82

DUTIES AND VIRTUES

D A Stronger Notion of the "Internally Justified": Intellectual Virtue Let us define an intellectual virtue or faculty as a competence in virtue of which one would mostly attain the truth and avoid error in a certain field of propositions F, when in certain conditions C. Subject S believes proposition p at time t out of intellectual virtue only if there is a field of propositions F, and there are conditions C, such that: (a) P is in F; (b) S is in C with respect to P; and (c) S would most likely be right if S believed a proposition X in field F when in conditions C with respect to X. Unlike Historical Reliabilism, this view does not require that there be a cognitive process leading to a belief in order for that belief to enjoy the strong justification required for constituting knowledge. Which is all to the good, since requiring such a process makes it hard to explain the justification for that paradigm of knowledge, the Cartesian cogito. There is a truth-conducive "faculty" through which everyone grasps their own existence at the moment of grasping. Indeed, what Descartes noticed about this faculty is its infallible reliability. But this requires that the existence which is grasped at a time t be existence at that very moment t. Grasp of earlier existence, no matter how near to the present, requires not the infallible cogito faculty, but a fallible faculty of memory. If we are to grant the cog ito its due measure of justification, and to explain its exceptional epistemic status, we must allow faculties which operate instantaneously in the sense that the outcome belief is about the very moment of believing, and the conditions C are conditions about what obtains at that very moment - where we need place no necessary and general requirements about what went before. By contrast with Historical Reliabilism, let us now work with intellectual virtues or faculties, defining their presence in a subject S by requiring that, concerning propositions X in field F, once S were in conditions C with respect to X, S would most likely attain the truth and avoid error.

@]-7

In fact a faculty or virtue would normally be a fairly stable disposition on the part of a subject relative to an environment. Being in conditions C with respect to proposition X would range from just being conscious and entertaining Xas in the case of "I think" or "I am" - to seeing an object 0 in good light at a favorable angle and distance, and without obstruction, etc. - as in "This before me is white and round." There is no restriction here to processes or to the internal. The conditions C and the field F may have much to do with the environment external to the subject: thus a moment ago we spoke of a C that involved seeing an external object in good light at a certain distance, etc. all of which involves factors external to the subject.

DUTIES AND VIRTUES

83

Normally, we could hope to attain a conception of C and F which at best and at its most explicit will still have to rely heavily on the assumed nature of the subject and the assumed character of the environment. Thus it may appear to you that there is a round and white object before you and you may have reason to think that in conditions C (i.e., for middle-sized objects in daylight, at arm's length) you would likely be right concerning propositions in field F (about their shapes and colors). But of course there are underlying reasons why you would most likely be right about such questions concerning such objects so placed. And these underlying reasons have to do with yourself and your intrinsic properties, largely your eyes and brain and nervous system; and they have to do also with the medium and the environment more generally, and its contents and properties at the time. A fuller, more explicit account of what is involved, in having an intellectual virtue or faculty is therefore this: Because subject S has a certain inner nature (I) and is placed in a certain environment (E), S would most likely be right on any proposition X in field F relative to which S stood in conditions C. S might be a human; I might involve possession of good eyes and a good nervous system including a brain in good order; E might include the surface of the earth with its relevant properties, within the parameters of variation experienced by humans over the centuries, or anyhow by subject S within his or her lifetime or within a certain more recent stretch of it; F might be a field of propositions specifying the colors or shapes of an object before S up to a certain level of determination and complexity (say greenness and squareness, but not chartreuseness or chiliagonicity); and C might be the conditions of S's seeing such an object in good light at arm's length and without obstructions. If S believes a proposition X in field F, about the shape of a facing surface before him, and X is false, things might have gone wrong at interestingly different points. Thus the medium might have gone wrong unknown to the subject, and perhaps even unknowably to the subject; or something within the subject might have changed Significantly: thus the lenses in the eyes of the subject might have become distorted, or the optic nerve might have become defective in ways important to shape recognition. If what goes wrong lies in the environment, that might prevent the subject from knowing what he believes, even if his belief were true, but there is a sense in which the subject would remain subjectively justified or anyhow virtuous in so believing. It is this sense of internal virtue that seems most significant for dealing with the new evil-demon argument and with the meta-incoherence objection .... Can something more positive be said in explication of such internal intellectual virtue?

84

DUTIES AND VIRTUES

Intellectual virtue is something that resides in a subject, something relative to an environment - though in the limiting case, the environment may be null, as perhaps when one engages in armchair reflection and thus comes to justified belief. A subject S's intellectual virtue V relative to an "environment" E may be defined as S's disposition to believe correctly propositions in a field F relative to which S stands in conditions C, in "environment" E. It bears emphasis first of all that to be in a certain" environment" is not just a matter of having a certain spatio-temporallocation, but is more a matter of having a complex set of properties, only some of which will be spatial or temporal. Secondly, we are interested of course in non-vacuous virtues, virtues which are not possessed simply because the subject would never be in conditions C relative to the propositions in F, or the like, though there may be no harm in allowing vacuous virtues to stand as trivial, uninteresting special cases. Notice now that, so defined, for S to have a virtue V relative to an environment E at a time t, S does not have to be in E at t (i.e., S does not need to have the properties required). Further, suppose that, while outside environment E and while not in conditions C with respect to a proposition X in F, S still retains the virtue involved, relative to E, because the following ECF conditional remains true of S: ~

(ECF) that if in E and in C relative to X in F, then S would most likely be right in his belief or disbelief of X. If S does so retain that virtue in that way, it can only be due to some components or aspects of S's intrinsic nature I, for it is S's possessing I together with being in E and in C with respect to X in F that fully explains and gives rise to the relevant disposition on the part of S, namely the disposition to believe correctly and avoid error regarding X in F, when so characterized and circumstanced. We may now distinguish between (a) possession of the virtue (relative to E) in the sense of possession of the disposition, Le., in the sense that the appropriate complex and general conditional (ECF) indicated above is true of the subject with the virtue, and (b) possession of a certain ground or basis of the virtue, in the sense of possessing an inner nature I from which the truth of the ECF conditional derives in turn. Of course one and the same virtue might have several different alternative possible grounds or bases. Thus the disposition to roll down an incline if free at its top with a certain orientation, in a certain environment (gravity, etc.), may be grounded in the sphericity and rigidity of an object, or alternatively it may be grounded in its cylindricality and rigidity. Either way. the conditional will obtain and the

DUTIES AND VIRTUES

[IJ--;:>

85

object will have the relevant disposition to roll. Similarly, Earthians and Martians may both be endowed with sight, in the sense of having the ability to tell colors and shapes, etc., though the principles of the operation of Earthian sight may differ widely from the principles that apply to Martians, which would or might presumably derive from a difference in the inner structure of the two species of being. What now makes a disposition (and the underlying inner structure or nature that grounds it) an intellectual virtue? If we view such a disposition as defined by a C-F pair, then a being might have the disposition to be right with respect to propositions in field F when in conditions C with respect to them, relative to one environment E but not relative to another environment E'. Such virtues, then, i.e., such C-F dispositions, might be virtuous only relative to an environment E and not relative to a different environment E'. And what makes such a disposition a virtue relative to an environment E seems now as obvious as it is that having the truth is an epistemic desideratum, and that being so constituted that one would most likely attain the truth in a certain field in a certain environment, when in certain conditions vis-a.-vis propositions in that field, is so far as it goes an epistemic desideratum, an intellectual virtue. What makes a subject intellectually virtuous? What makes her inner nature meritorious? Surely we can't require that a being have all merit and virtue before it can have any Consider then a subject who has a minimal virtue of responding, thermometer-like, to environing food, and suppose him to have the minimal complexity and sophistication required for having beliefs at all so that he is not literally just a thermometer or the like. Yet we suppose him further to have no way of relating what he senses, and his sensing of it, to a wider view of things that will explain it all, that will enable him perhaps to make related predictions and exercise related control. No, this ability is a relatively isolated phenomenon to which the subject yields with infant-like, unselfconscious simplicity. Suppose indeed the subject is just an infant or a higher animal. Can we allow that he knows of the presence of food when he has a correct belief to that effect? Well, the subject may of course have reliable belief that there is something edible there, without having a belief as reliable as that of a normal, well-informed adult, with some knowledge of food composition, basic nutrition, basic perception, etc., and who can at least implicitly interrelate these matters for a relatively much more coherent and complete view of the matter and related matters. Edibility can be a fairly complex matter, and how we have perceptual access to that property can also be rather involved, and the more one knows about the various factors whose interrelation yields the perceptible edibility of something before one, presumably the more reliable one's access to that all-important property. Here then is one proposal on what makes one's belief that-p a result of enough virtue to make one internally justified in that belief. First of all we need to relativize to an assumed environment, which need not be the

86

DUTIES AND VIRTUES

environment that the believer actually is in. What is required for a subject S to believe that-p out of sufficient virtue relative to environment E is that the proposition that-p be in a field F and that S be in conditions C with respect to that proposition, such that S would not be in C with respect to a proposition in F while in environment E, without S being most likely to believe correctly with regard to that proposition; and further that by comparison with epistemic group G, S is not grossly defective in ability to detect thus the truth in field F; i.e., it cannot be that S would have, by comparison with G: (a) only a relatively very low probability of success, (b) in a relatively very restricted class F, (c) in a very restricted environment E, (d) in conditions C that are relatively infrequent, where all this relativity holds with respect to fellow members of G and to their normal environment and circumstances. (There is of course some variation from context to context as to what the relevant group might be when one engages in discussion of whether or not some subject knows something or is at least justified in believing it. But normally a certain group will stand out, with humanity being the default value.)

E

Intellectual Virtue Applied

Consider now again the new evil-demon problem and the problem of metaincoherence. The crucial question in each case seems to be that of the internal justification of the subject, and this in turn seems not a matter of his superweak or weak or meta justification, so much as a matter of the virtue and total internal justification of that subject relative to an assumed group G and environment E, which absent any sign to the contrary one would take to be the group of humans in a normal human environment for the sort of question under consideration. Given these assumptions, the victim of the evil demon is virtuous and internally justified in every relevant respect, ... for the victim is supposed to be just like an arbitrarily selected normal human in all cognitively relevant internal respects. Therefore, the internal structure and goings on in the victim must be at least up to par, in respect of how virtuous all of that internal nature makes the victim, relative to a normal one of us in our usual environment for considering whether we have a fire before us or the like. For those inclined towards mentalism or towards some broadly Cartesian view of the self and her mental life, this means at a minimum that the experience-belief mechanisms must not be random, but must rather be systematically truth-conducive, and that the subject must attain some minimum of coherent perspective on her own situation in the relevant environment, and on her modes of reliable access to

DUTIES AND VIRTUES

87

information about that environment. Consider next those inclined towards naturalism, who hold the person to be either just a physical organism, or some physical part of an organism, or to be anyhow constituted essentially by some such physical entity; for these it would be required that the relevant physical being identical with or constitutive of the subject, in the situation in question, must not be defective in cognitively relevant internal respects; which would mean, among other things, that the subject would acquire beliefs about the colors or shapes of facing surfaces only under appropriate prompting at the relevant surfaces of the relevant visual organs (and not, e.g., through direct manipulation of the brain by some internal randomizing device).4 We have appealed to an intuitive distinction between what is intrinsic or internal to a subject or being, and what is extrinsic or external. Now when a subject receives certain inputs and emits as output a certain belief or a certain choice, that belief or choice can be defective either in virtue of an internal factor or in virtue of an external factor (or, of course, both). That is to say, it may be that everything inner, intrinsic, or internal to the subject operates flawlessly and indeed brilliantly, but that something goes awry with the belief, which turns out to be false, or with the choice, which turns out to be disastrous - because of some factor that, with respect to that 5 subject, is outer, extrinsic, or external. In terms of that distinction, the victim of the demon may be seen to be internally justified, just as internally justified as we are, whereas the metaincoherent are internally unjustified, unlike us. My proposal is that justification is relative to environment. Relative to our actual environment A, our automatic experience-belief mechanisms count as virtues that yield much truth and justification. Of course relative to the demonic environment D such mechanisms are not virtuous and yield neither truth nor justification. It follows that relative to D the demon's victims are not justified, and yet relative to A their beliefs are justified. Thus may we fit our surface intuitions about such victims: that they lack knowledge but not justification. In fact, a fuller account should distinguish between "justification" and "aptness,,6 as follows:

4

As for the generality problem, my own proposed solution appears in my Knowledge in

Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), Chapter 16.

This sort of distinction between the internal virtue of a subject and his or her (favorable or unfavorable) circumstances is drawn in Knowledge in Perspective, Chapter 2. There knowledge is relativized to epistemic community, though not in a way that imports any subjectivism or conventionalism, and consequences are drawn for the circumstances within which praise or blame is appropriate (see especially the first part of Section II). 6 For this sort of distinction, see, e.g., Knowledge in Perspective, Chapter 14. The more generic distinction between external and internal justification may be found in Chapter 1 of Knowledge in Perspective. 5

88

DUTIES AND VIRTUES

(a) The "justification" of a belief B requires that B have a basis in its inference or coherence relations to other beliefs in the believer's mindas in the "justification" of a belief derived from deeper principles, and thus "justified," or the "justification" of a belief adopted through cognizance of its according with the subject's principles, including principles as to what beliefs are permissible in the circumstances as viewed by that subject. (b) The "aptness" of a belief B relative to an environment E requires that B derive from what relative to E is an intellectual virtue, i.e., a way of arriving at belief that yields an appropriate preponderance of truth over error (in the field of propositions in question, in the sort of context involved). As far as I can see, however, the basic points would remain within the more complex picture as well. And note that "justification" itself would then amount to a sort of inner coherence, something that the demon's victims can obviously have despite their cognitively hostile environment, but also something that will earn them praise relative to that environment only if it is not just an inner drive for greater and greater explanatory comprehensiveness, a drive which leads nowhere but to a more and more complex tissue of falsehoods. If we believe our world not to be such a world, then we can say that, relative to our actual environment A, "justification" as inner coherence earns its honorific status, and is an intellectual virtue, dear to the scientist, the philosopher, and the detective. Relative to the demon's D, therefore, the victim's belief may be inapt and even unjustified - if "justification" is essentially honorific - or if "justified" simply because coherent then, relative to D, that justification may yet have little or no cognitive worth. Even so, relative to our environment A, the beliefs of the demon's victim may still be both apt and valuably justified through their inner coherence. The epistemology defended in this paper - virtue perspectivism - is distinguished from generic reliabilism in three main respects: (a) Virtue perspectivism requires not just any reliable mechanism of belief acquisition for belief that can qualify as knowledge; it requires the belief to derive from an intellectual virtue or faculty.... (b) Virtue perspectivism distinguishes between aptness and justification of belief, where a belief is apt if it derives from a faculty or virtue, but is justified only if it fits coherently within the epistemic perspective of the believer - perhaps by being connected to adequate reasons in the mind of the believer in such a way that the believer follows adequate or even impeccable intellectual procedure.... This distinction is used as one way to deal with the new evil-demon problem ....

DUTIES AND VIRTUES

[kJ--7

89

(c) Virtue perspectivism distinguishes between animal and reflective knowledge. For animal knowledge one needs only belief that is apt and derives from an intellectual virtue or faculty. By contrast, reflective knowledge always requires belief that not only is apt but also has a kind of justification, since it must be belief that fits coherently within the epistemic perspective of the believer.... This distinction is used earlier in this chapter to deal with the meta-incoherence problem, and it also opens the way to a solution for the generality problem ....

Commentary on Sosa Since virtue perspectivism is a development and refinement of Goldman-type process reliabilism ('generic reliabilism' or 'historical reliabilism'), Sosa begins by presenting the three major objections to process reliabilism: the generality problem, the new evil-demon problem, and the meta-incoherence problem. As was explained in Chapter 2, there are reliabilist replies to each of these problems. But instead of subjecting the reader to a lengthy and tedious investigation of how process reliabilism can be defended against these objections, Sosa makes a fresh start and sets forth a new epistemological approach on the basis of process reliabilism - virtue perspectivism. Virtue perspectivism promises to account for the intuitions and worries driving the generality problem, the new evil-demon problem, and the meta-incoherence problem. Yet in this essay Sosa concerns himself only with the second and third problem. At the centre of virtue reliabilism is the notion of an intellectual virtue. Intellectual virtues are understood as (innate or acquired) epistemic abilities or dispositions of a person such that, under the appropriate circumstances, he believes true propositions and avoids believing false propositions within a field of propositions. A belief has positive epistemic status if it is formed by virtuous dispositions and not by vicious dispositions. Examples of intellectual virtues are vision, hearing, introspection, memory, logical intuition, deduction, and induction. Just as moral virtues are dispositions that lead for the most part to morally valuable actions, intellectual virtues are dispositions that, by and large, bring about true beliefs.l Whereas process reliabilism claims that a belief is justified if it results from a reliable cognitive process, virtue perspectivism restricts the types of processes that can generate justified beliefs to those which have their basis in intellectual virtues. In the passages marked 0-7 and @]--7 Sosa emphasizes the context-dependency of intellectual virtues. Intellectual virtues are only appropriate with respect to certain propositions and in certain circumstances. The circumstances include psychological conditions (such as being awake) as well as environmental conditions (such as good Other authors understand intellectual virtues quite differently. On their view, intellectual virtues are more like personality traits than cognitive abilities. See, for example, J. Montmarquet, 'Epistemic Virtues', Mind 96 (1987), pp. 482-97.

90

DUTIES AND VIRTUES

lighting). Consider, for example, a virtuous faculty of vision. If the environment is epistemically unfriendly because, say, it is controlled by an evil demon, then the otherwise virtuous faculty of vision is going to produce mostly false beliefs. But that doesn't mean that the faculty is not virtuous relative to the normal world. In the passages marked G[/--7 and [[/--7 Sosa uses the context-dependency of virtues to develop a response to the new evil-demon problem. Victims of an evil demon are virtuous relative to the normal world, but simply have the bad luck of being in an environment where their virtuous capacities are foiled. They are conditionally or 'internally' virtuous; that is, given a normal environment, their beliefs would be reliable. By filling in the variables offormula (ECF) in paragraph we get the following conditional truth: if the victim of the evil demon lived in the normal world, then he would most likely be right in his belief or disbelief of X. In sum, the victim of an evil demon who falsely believes that he is seeing X is justified relative to normal worlds. Sosa's solution to the new evil-demon problem is essentially the same as Goldman's normal-world response, which was explained in Chapter 2. Goldman also maintains that the reliability of a belief-formation process is determined by the proportion of true beliefs it produces in normal worlds.

07,

Why does Sosa claim in th~;taragraph marked [Ej-?> that pro~ reliabilism problems explaining the in~1:>le knowledge I have of my pre~~~t existence? Assuming Descartes's 'cogito ergo sum' ('I am thinking, therefore I exist') is intended as an argument rather than just an appeal to intuition, it rests on the idea that beliefs about one's own present thoughts enjoy a special authority that make them immune to sceptical doubts. Not even an evil demon could trick me into thinking that I am thinking when I am not thinking, for to think that I am thinking is to be thinking. The first part of the cogito argument - 'I am thinking' - is therefore said to be indubitable. The premise 'I am thinking' in conjunction with the presupposition that it is impossible for that which is thinking not to exist yields the conclusion 'I exist'. Since the premise is indubitable and the conclusion follows from it by the light of nature, the conclusion too is indubitable. The 'cogito ergo sum' argument shows that I can infallibly know that I exist now. The knowledge I have of my past existence does not have the same epistemic authority as the knowledge of my present existence. There are numerous scenarios which render the statement, 'I am thinking, therefore I existed', false. Now for the process reliabilist to account for the different epistemic status of 'cogito ergo sum' and 'cogito ergo eram', a distinction has to be drawn between the highly reliable cognitive faculty via which I know of my present existence and the less reliable cognitive faculty via which I know of my past existence. Yet Sosa seems to think that it is implausible to assume that the faculty through which I know that I exist now differs in kind from the faculty through which I know that I existed a split second ago.

DUTIES AND VIRTUES

91

Does someone whose belief results from an intellectual virtue need to know believe) that his belief is virtuously produced? As is explained in the paragraph marked [}--7, virtue-based reliabilism is an externalist theory in that it doesn't require that the subject be aware of the fact that he is believing out of an intellectual virtue. A belief can have its source in a cognitive virtue without one being aware of it and hence without one having any reason for thinking that the belief is reliably formed. Section III introduces a distinction between aptness and justification proper (paragraph and between animal knowledge and reflective knowledge (paragraph [k}-7). Aptness is the positive epistemic status that a belief has by virtue of being caused by an intellectual virtue. Aptness arises as a result of the proper functioning of one or more intellectual virtues. A belief is apt if it is produced by an intellectual virtue and not apt if it is produced by an intellectual vice. When an apt belief is true, it is a piece of animal knowledge. Animal knowledge is externalist in that it doesn't require subjects to know or believe that their beliefs are produced by intellectual virtues. While animal knowledge is only a matter of arriving at true beliefs by the employment of virtuous faculties, reflective knowledge requires, in addition, that the believer grasps the fact that his belief is grounded in a reliable cognitive faculty. Justification proper consists in the subject attaining a 'coherent perspective on her own situation in the relevant environment, and on her modes of reliable access to information about that environment' (passage [h}-7). In other words, a subject has reflective knowledge if his virtuously produced belief also fits into a coherent perspective which includes awareness of the fact that the belief is virtuously produced. So we end up with two tiers of positive epistemic status - first-order externalist aptness and second-order internalist justification. The kind of externalism used in the first order is reliabilism and the kind of internalism used in the second order is coherentism. As will be explained in Chapter 5, coherentism claims that individual beliefs are justified by the entire system of beliefs in which they cohere. The items in coherent systems of beliefs must mutually support each other. A belief can only be justified 'from within', from the relations of mutual support that it bears to other beliefs. The aim of coherentism, therefore, is internalistic. A coherentist justification is accessible to the believer.

ITJ--7)

How does the distinction between animal and reflective knowledge help to solve the meta-incoherence problem? The meta-incoherence problem relies on the internalist intuition that epistemic justification requires that the acceptance of the belief in question be rational, which in turn requires that the believer be aware of a reason for thinking that the belief is true. As was explained in Chapter 2, we are asked to imagine a person who possesses reliable clairvoyant powers, but who has no reason to think that he

92

DUTIES AND VIRTUES

has such cognitive powers and perhaps even good reasons to the contrary. On the basis of these powers, he comes to believe p, which, in fact, is true. The claim, however, is that he is not justified in accepting the belief that p, despite the fact that the reliabilist condition is satisfied. Using the distinction between external aptness and internal justification, Sosa holds that the person's clairvoyant belief constitutes animal knowledge but doesn't amount to reflective knowledge. For reflective knowledge is a true first-order belief which is reliably produced plus a meta-belief which establishes that the first-order belief is reliably produced and which is justified in the coherentist sense. The clairvoyant lacks reflective knowledge because he is 'internally unjustified' (passage ~) in thinking that his first-order belief is reliably formed. Finally consider whether Sosa's virtue epistemology satisfactorily combines internalist and externalist features in a single theory. -t. Can internaHsm and externalism be combined by bifurcating the account >knowledge and justification into an object-level and a meta-level and aSl)lgJUl'1~· ••externalism and internalism to different levels?

It seems as if Sosa's epistemology creates a Gettier problem at the second level. To see this, compare the features that render meta-beliefs true with the features that render them justified. Meta-beliefs concerning the reliability of one's object-level beliefs are true by virtue of these object-level beliefs being reliably formed (or apt). Yet what justifies meta-beliefs is something quite different. In Sosa's view, metabeliefs are justified in virtue of fitting together coherently with other beliefs and experiences. Thus there is a gap between the satisfaction of the justification condition and the satisfaction of the truth condition. And, as was explained in Chapter 1, it is this gap that lies at the heart of the Gettier problem. Whether the notion of reflective knowledge is in fact vulnerable to Gettier cases depends, among other things, on whether internalist coherence in the second order increases reliability or aptness in the first order. Is the probability of an object-level belief being reliable higher given that one has a meta-belief which is justified in the coherentist sense? Sosa claims that 'broad coherence is valuable and admirable in a subject because it increases the likelihood that the subject will have true beliefs and avoid false beliefs'. 2 If it were in fact the case that internalist coherence at the second level increases reliability at the first level, then the threat of a Gettier problem would disappear. The satisfaction of the truth condition of meta-beliefs would indeed be linked with the satisfaction of the justification condition of meta-beliefs. In the context of Bonjour's article (Chapter 5) we will return to the question of whether there is a relation between coherence and truth.

'Perspectives in Virtue Epistemology: A Response Studies 78 (1995), p. 232.

to

Dancy and BonJour', Philosophical

4

Knowledge by Hearsay

Introduction to the Problem Testimony is often considered one of six basic sources of knowledge and justification. The other five sources are perception (including proprioception, i.e., awareness of the condition and activities of one's own body), introspection, memory, reason, and inference. This classification has been disputed. Some epistemologists regard introspection not as an independent source of knowledge but as a form of perception. Memory is sometimes considered not as a source of knowledge but merely as a retention of knowledge already obtained in some other way. Inference is arguably not an independent source of knowledge since the premises or facts from which one infers a conclusion must come from elsewhere. And some philosophers would dispute the power of pure reason as a source of a priori knowledge. Knowledge through what others tell us forms a large part of the body of our knowledge. Small children depend almost entirely on what their parents tell them. And large portions of the body of knowledge adults possess are also gained secondhand - through books, the media, friends or teachers, and the internet. Most of us know about, say, quantum mechanics only on the say-so of others. Testimony allows knowledge to be spread throughout the community and to be passed on through generations; it is the foundation of culture and civilization. Without second-hand knowledge our lives would be epistemically impoverished. There is no question that most of what we know we know because we accept the word of others. There is a question, however, over whether testimony belongs among the sources of knowledge. According to some philosophers, testimony is not a source of knowledge because you cannot know something on the basis of testimony unless the attester knows it. If the attester doesn't know that p, then his attesting to it cannot cause in you testimonially grounded knowledge that p. Rather than

94

KNOWLEDGE BY HEARSAY

generating knowledge, testimony only transmits knowledge. The knowledge transmitted by testimony was generated by some source other than testimony, such as perception. Some philosophers grant that testimony is a source of knowledge but they deny that it is a basic source. They take testimony to be a species of inferential knowledge. On this view, when one learns from 5 some fact, one always reasons (if only halfconsciously) in something like the following way: 5 said that p; 5 is a fairly reliable fellow and he should know about p; so p is true. Since in this picture testimony is not an independent source of knowledge, but reduces to perception, memory, and inference, it is labelled the reductionist view of testimony. Reductionism is a kind of internalism about testimony and can be characterized by two claims: (i) The mere fact that the speaker said that p, provides no reason to believe that p. (ii) A testimonial belief is justified to the extent that one has reasons for acceptance. Others grant that sometimes we accept second-hand information only when we have independent reasons for thinking that the inference from '5 said that p' to 'p is true' is justified, but they find it questionable whether we always reason in this way or whether such reasoning is even necessary. On an externalist or anti-reductionist view, we just believe what people tell us, and we believe it in a way that is very much like the way we believe our eyes and ears when they 'tell' us what is happening around us. Testimonial beliefs are non-inferentially justified and testimony is a basic source of knowledge. Anti-reductionism may be characterized by the following two theses: (i) Other things being equal, we have a basic epistemic right to believe intelligible testimony. (ii) Acceptance of testimony produces a justified belief (knowledge) if the attester's belief was justified (known). This chapter applies the internalisml externalism debate to the topic of testimony. The two texts represent internalist reductionism and externalist anti-reductionism. According to Fricker, to acquire knowledge by hearsay one must ensure that the speaker is trustworthy. Burge, on the other hand, holds that we have a blanket presumptive right to trust others unless we have strong reasons not to do so. Regardless of whether testimony belongs among the basic sources of knowledge, testimony differs from other sources in at least two respects. First, unlike with other sources of knowledge, (reductionists claim that) one can, in principle, check the reliability of testimony or confirm the deliverance of an attester without having to rely on testimony itself. Second-hand information can be checked by using other sources of knowledge. (See Fricker's refutation of the 'negative claim'.) However, to test the reliability of, say, my memory I must try harder to recall or consult the memory of others. And to verify the deliverances of my eyes I have to rely on other people's perception. Second, while other sources of knowledge usually don't involve other people, testimony always depends on someone else's will and action. The


95

attester decides what to attest and thus can lie. Obviously, for a person to come to know that p on the basis of testimony, the attester must not lie. Given that some attesters are not trustworthy and that it is possible to independently check the reliability of testimonially based beliefs, the reductionist seems to be right in demanding that we gather independent evidence for S's trustworthiness and p's truth before we can be said to justifiably infer 'p is true' from'S said that p'. After all, how else should justified belief based on testimony be distinguished from merely lucky guesses? The anti-reductionist will object, however, that usually we 'just believe' what people tell us. Unless we have positive reasons to question the credibility and/ or competence of the attester as well as the truth of the attested proposition, we unreservedly accept testimonial information. Given our credible-unless-otherwiseindicated attitude, if reductionism was right, the majority of our beliefs based on testimony would be unjustified. And surely this can't be right.

Introduction to Fricker Elizabeth Fricker is lecturer in philosophy at Oxford University and tutorial fellow at Magdalen College. She works mainly in epistemology and philosophy of mind and language. Apart from numerous essays on testimony, she has written on selfknowledge, linguistic understanding, and the concept of knowledge. Fricker is the leading advocate of 'local reductionism', i.e., the doctrine that hearers need independent evidence that a particular piece of testimony is reliable if they are to be justified in believing it. Some of Fricker's other papers on testimony are: 'The Epistemology of Testimony', Aristotelian Society Supp. 61 (1987), pp. 57-83, 'Telling and Trusting', Mind 104 (1995), pp. 393-411, and 'Testimony: Knowing through Being Told', in 1. Niiniluoto, M. Sintonen, and J. Wolenski (eds.), Handbook of Epistemology (2004), pp. 109-30.

Elizabeth Fricker, 'Against

Gullibility~

1 One main school in the Indian classical tradition of philosophy insists that testimony - 'learning from words' - is a source or type of knowledge sui generis, one which cannot be reduced to any other type - not to perception, memory, or inference nor, we may add, to combinations of these. Such an irreducibility thesis could take diverse specific forms. One form it may take is as the thesis that a hearer has a presumptive epistemic right to trust an arbitrary speaker. We may essay an initial formulation of this thesis thus:

96

KNOWLEDGE BY HEARS A Y

PR thesis: On any occasion of testimony, the hearer has the epistemic right to assume, without evidence, that the speaker is trust worthy, i.e. that what she says will be true, unless there are special circumstances which defeat this presumption. (Thus she has the epistemic right to believe the speaker's assertion, unless such defeating conditions obtain.) The claim that there is such a special presumptive right (PR) to trust associated with testimony constitutes a kind of irreducibility thesis, since the hearer's right to believe what she is told, on this view, stems from a special normative epistemic principle pertaining to testimony, and is not a piece of common-or-garden inductively based empirical inference. Testimony's alleged status as a special source of knowledge is underlined if this PR thesis is conjoined with a negative claim, which we may formulate initially thus: NC: It is not, generally speaking, possible for a hearer to obtain independent confirmation that a given speaker is trustworthy - that what she says will be true.

If this Negative Claim is true, then knowledge can regularly be gained through testimony only if there is no need for independent confirmation of the trustworthiness of speakers; that is, if the PR thesis holds. So the existence of this special normative epistemic principle is then essential to the gaining of knowledge through testimony. This pair of claims together is one apt explication of the irreduCibility thesis of the Nyaya school of Indian philosophy.* In this paper I shall give one half of a refutation of the PR thesis, by arguing against the Negative Claim, which features as a premise in one central argument for it. My discussion also shows the prima facie case against a PRo A fuller treatment would also consider, and reject, various positive arguments for a PR which may be made, which appeal to the essential nature of language, and of understanding, arguing that these imply that a general disposition to trust is essential to language, and thence to its epistemic legitimacy. Here I can only record my view that no such argument succeeds. The Negative Claim that there can, generally speaking, be no non-circular confirmation that a given speaker is trustworthy, is false. And any fully competent participant in the social institution of a natural language simply knows too much about the characteristic role of the speaker, and the possible gaps which may open up between a speaker's making an assertion, and what she asserts being so, to want to form beliefs in accordance with the policy a PR allows. The PR thesis is an epistemic charter for the gullible and undiscriminating. This paper argues against gullibility.


97

2

07

[E}-?

The PR thesis is ... a normative epistemic principle, amounting to the thesis that a hearer has the epistemic right to believe what she observes an arbitrary speaker to assert, just on the ground that it has been asserted: she need not attempt any assessment of the likelihood that this speaker's assertions about their subject matter will be true, nor modify her disposition to believe according to such an assessment. A corollary of the PR thesis is thus that a hearer gives a fully adequate justification of her belief just by citing the fact that "Someone told me so". This simple defence does not need supplementation with evidence for the trustworthiness of her informant. Nor, on this view, does an ordinary hearer need to supplement the simple defence by invoking the PR thesis itself. That thesis is formulated by the philosopher, as a theoretical registering of the fact that the simple defence is all that is needed. The PR thesis is not to be confused with a descriptive premiss that 'speakers mainly tell the truth.' The view that belief in what is asserted is justified by reference to such a descriptive premiss, cited as part of the firstlevel justification of the belief, is a quite different view, one which would constitute a reduction of knowledge from testimony to an ordinary case of inductively based inferential knowledge. The alleged descriptive premiss (whether claimed to be empirically confirmed fact, or a priori conceptual truth about language) might be invoked in an attempted philosophical argument for the PR thesis. But this is entirely different from its featuring among the premisses which an ordinary hearer must know and be able to cite, to justify her belief. Our target is the PR thesis. Arguments for it fall into two kinds: the positive arguments from the essential nature oflanguage already mentioned, and a negative argument. This last is a transcendental argument which runs thus: (1) Knowledge can be and frequently is gained by means of testimony; (2) [NC] It is not, generally speaking, possible for a hearer to obtain

independent confirmation that a given speaker is trustworthy; therefore (3) There is knowledge gained by testimony only if there is a presumptive

right on the part of any hearer to trust an arbitrary speaker; therefore (4) There is such a presumptive right to trust.

1

This argument seems to be implicit in C. A. J. Coady 'Testimony and Observation', Arner. Phil. Quart. 10, No.2, April 1973, pp. 49-55.

98


One might reject this argument by rejecting its initial premiss. This is not my strategy. I agree with the proponent of the argument that it is a constraint on any epistemology of testimony, that it preserve our commonsense view that knowledge can be gained through testimony. This paper is devoted to stopping the transcendental argument by showing its second premise, the Negative Claim, to be false.

3 The epistemological <problem of justifying belief through testimony' is the problem of showing how it can be the case that a hearer on a particular occasion has the epistemic right to believe what she is told - to believe a particular speaker's assertion. If an account showing that and how this is possible is given, then the epistemological problem of testimony has been solved. The solution can take either of two routes. It may be shown that the required step - from Bonjour rejects the coherence theory of truth and instead adopts the correspondence theory of truth, which states that a belief that p is true if and only if it corresponds with the fact that p. The correspondence theory captures our commonsense intuition that truth depends on something in the world to make it true. Bonjour mentions in passing that the correspondence theory of truth poses unresolved problems.

FOUNDATIONS OR COHERENCE?

155

Can you think of some of the problems that are raised by the correspondence theory of truth? Unless we know what a fact is and what it is for a belief to correspond to a fact, the correspondence theory of truth is explanatorily vacuous. But since it is difficult to explain what is a fact without using the concept of truth, it is doubtful that the correspondence theory provides a non-circular account of truth. Moreover, is the correspondence between a proposition p and the fact that p one of identity, close resemblance, or simply rough correlation? Let p stand for the proposition that the car is red. Unlike the car, the proposition p cannot be weighed, seen, or driven. So in what respect can p

Reading Epistemology: Selected Texts with Interactive Commentary (Reading Philosophy)

Reading Metaphysics: Selected Texts with Interactive Commentary (Reading Philosophy)

Reading Philosophy of Language: Selected Texts with Interactive Commentary

The Reading of Theoretical Texts

Reading

Reading

Reading De Man Reading

Reading the New Testament: Contemporary Approaches (Reading Religious Texts)

Biblical Text and Texture: A Literary Reading of Selected Texts

Reading Faulkner: The unvanquished : glossary and commentary

Reading Faulkner: glossary and commentary. Absalom, Absalom!

Children Reading Pictures: Interpreting Visual Texts

Reading Tudor-Stuart texts through cultural historicism

Dakotah's Reading

Kiziah's Reading

Sarael's Reading

Reading Cavell

Reading Narrative

Reading Japanese

Reading China

Kiziah's Reading

Reading Faulkner: Collected Stories (Reading Faulkner Series)

Forbidden Reading

Beach Reading

Beach Reading

Reading Renunciation

Blueprint Reading

Reading Capital

Assessing Reading

Reading Power

Reading Epistemology: Selected Texts with Interactive Commentary (Reading Philosophy)

Reading Metaphysics: Selected Texts with Interactive Commentary (Reading Philosophy)

Reading Philosophy of Language: Selected Texts with Interactive Commentary

The Reading of Theoretical Texts

Reading

Reading

Reading De Man Reading

Reading the New Testament: Contemporary Approaches (Reading Religious Texts)

Biblical Text and Texture: A Literary Reading of Selected Texts

Reading Faulkner: The unvanquished : glossary and commentary

Reading Faulkner: glossary and commentary. Absalom, Absalom!

Children Reading Pictures: Interpreting Visual Texts

Reading Tudor-Stuart texts through cultural historicism

Dakotah's Reading

Kiziah's Reading

Sarael's Reading

Reading Cavell

Reading Narrative

Reading Japanese

Reading China

Kiziah's Reading

Reading Faulkner: Collected Stories (Reading Faulkner Series)

Forbidden Reading

Beach Reading

Beach Reading

Reading Renunciation

Blueprint Reading

Reading Capital

Assessing Reading

Reading Power

Recommend Documents